


you're nobody 'til somebody wants you (while) dead

by pepperfield



Category: Psychopath Diary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Character Death, Codependency, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Haunting, Idiots in Love, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Obsessive Relationship, Yook Dong-sik's Rich Douchebag Reform School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: “Are you going to just follow me around for the rest of your afterlife?” In-woo snaps.“Only as long as it takes for you to give up your quest for revenge,” Dong-sik says, stubbornly trailing after him again.“Forget tangibility. I need to learn how to kill another ghost."“Of course you do. There isn’t much on your mind besides murder, is there."Ghost AU where Dong-sik goes out the window with In-woo, and their fall doesn't meet such a convenient end.
Relationships: Seo Inwoo/Yook Dongsik
Comments: 38
Kudos: 207





	you're nobody 'til somebody wants you (while) dead

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, friends, I'm back because I missed these foolish murder boyfriends!
> 
> I wanted to start a one-shot collection for them but this one got really out of hand so it gets its own fic. I guess it's an "episode 16 without plot armor" au, haha. Let me know if you have any questions/concerns!

The thing about grudges is that once you die, they either seem suddenly silly or take on even more importance than before. But Dong-sik doesn’t think about this until some time later, when In-woo’s ghostly hands are throttling his throat in an attempt to erase him a second time, a bit more permanently.

He’s currently a little preoccupied with the sight of his broken body lying in an ever-expanding pool of blood and glass next to Seo In-woo’s equally mangled corpse.

“That looks pretty bad,” Dong-sik says numbly as he looks down at the body he was just ejected from. Maybe if he just shimmies back in, he can wake up? Sure, all his bones are messed up beyond repair and there’s brain and stuff everywhere, but it could be worth a try. He turns and lays down atop his own corpse, but doesn’t do anything more than phase pointlessly in and out of himself. Damn.

He’s still hovering in place when the person behind him stirs, and In-woo — or his spirit, rather — sits up, growling, “When I get my hands on him I’m going to throw him into a wood chipper.”

“I think that would be overkill,” Dong-sik tells him, floating into a seated position.

But In-woo doesn’t seem to have caught up with the situation yet, because he immediately lunges at Dong-sik, who instinctively floats away out of reach, which is kind of fun. He still hasn’t really processed any of this ghost business, but at least he can fly and he’s not in pain, so there’s that.

“Get back here!” In-woo commands, apparently unaware that he can also fly. He’s weirdly unfazed by Dong-sik’s newfound ability, but he’s probably still in shock.

“No, I don’t want you to try to kill me any more dead than I already am,” Dong-sik counters, pointing at his corpse. In-woo finally looks down, taking in the sight of their bodies painting a vivid scene across the sidewalk outside Daehan. In the close distance, the sound of footsteps and sirens approaches.

In-woo is expressionless as he processes this information, and then he stands and shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “This is just an elaborate delusion. I’m probably in a coma at a hospital somewhere, after landing in a passing garbage truck or something.”

“Isn’t that much more unlikely?” Dong-sik asks, floating back down to stand beside him. Now that he has no shotgun, and they’re both fairly deceased, he’s no longer that scary. It’s not like he can shoot or stab Dong-sik anymore. 

But once he gets within range, In-woo punches him in the stomach. It doesn’t exactly hurt — it’s like a burst of pressure that sends him stumbling away, though that might be due to the instinctive desire to curl in on oneself when getting gutpunched. 

“Stop that, Director Seo,” Dong-sik says while standing out of reach. “We’re both ghosts. There’s no point in fighting anymore.”

“You have no proof that I’m _not_ in a coma right now,” In-woo says stubbornly. He reaches down to try and pick up the shotgun that came sailing down with them, but just phases through it.

Dong-sik sighs. “I guess I can’t exactly refute that, but isn’t dreaming about being a ghost about the same as being a ghost? The extra coma layer just complicates things. Besides, why would you torture yourself by coma dreaming about me?”

In-woo frowns. “That’s a valid point. But I still refuse to accept that I let an idiot like you kill me.”

Oh, is that the sticking point? “If it makes you feel better, you were at least 50% responsible for your own death,” Dong-sik offers as the police and paramedics finally arrive on scene. 

As expected, no one reacts to their presence, even when In-woo runs through multiple people. Dong-sik gives it a try too, and causes one of the passing cops to shiver, but everyone is too busy dealing with their physical bodies to be disturbed by some chills. Dong-sik watches the proceedings with morbid curiosity, and by the time he’s officially declared dead by the medical examiner, he finds that In-woo has wandered off a bit.

Knowing that he ought to keep an eye on In-woo, Dong-sik floats over to join him at the corner of the building, where he appears to be giving himself a pep talk.

“Alright, so I’m dead. That doesn’t change anything-”

“I think it changes a lot, actually,” Dong-sik says helpfully, and In-woo pushes him away again.

“There’s no helping my reputation anymore,” In-woo continues muttering, “but the rest can still be arranged. Ghosts have some powers, don’t they? Of course they do, otherwise how would they haunt anything. That’s settled, then.” He stops talking in favor of looking over at the cops. Dong-sik doesn’t like the calculating expression that settles on his face.

“In-woo-ssi,” he says, because it seems bizarre to refer to him as director, given that neither of them are employed anymore, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t see how that concerns you,” In-woo says, still scanning the crowd. “Must still be upstairs,” he suddenly concludes, an unholy light filling his eyes, and Dong-sik jolts forward in alarm. Shim Bo-kyung.

“No, leave her alone,” he commands, but In-woo shoves him to the ground and plants a foot on his stomach as he stares up at the window from which they vacated the building (and their bodies). He glances down at Dong-sik, as if to analyze him, and then phases through the wall into the building. Dong-sik opts for flying straight up toward the window instead, hoping to cut him off.

When he arrives, he sees Bo-kyung speaking to a paramedic. Her eyes keep darting toward the window, and she looks haggard and haunted. She probably feels responsible for what happened to the two of them, because she’s kind like that. Dong-sik wishes he could comfort her, but more importantly, he needs to protect her. He goes to stand beside her, listening vaguely to her conversation about her injuries and her request to speak to her commanding officer, but his attention is on scanning the room for Seo In-woo.

It takes only another few seconds for In-woo to appear, using the doorway as if he’s still human. He smiles when he sees Dong-sik with his fists up, and comes strolling over, calm as still waters again.

“Don’t you dare touch her,” Dong-sik snaps, putting himself as a shield in front of his friend. He still remembers the terror he felt with the end of In-woo’s shotgun pressed to her throat. There’s absolutely no way he’s going to allow In-woo to threaten her again.

“Oh, Dong-sik-ssi, I couldn’t touch her even if I tried,” In-woo says, giving him that wolf’s smile, the one that breaks the handsome mask of gentility and reveals the unhinged murderer underneath. Dong-sik tries to punch him but gets kicked bodily out of the way. In-woo reaches for Bo-kyung’s face.

Dong-sik cries out in alarm, but In-woo’s fingers just pass harmlessly through her cheek. She shakes her head a bit, as if to shrug off an insect, but continues to speak to the paramedic unhindered. As was the case outside, nobody seems to be able to sense either of them.

“See? She’s perfectly fine. For now.” In-woo is practically purring, no doubt enjoying the anger Dong-sik is radiating at him. “But how long can that last? Eventually I’m going to learn how to manipulate physical matter again, and then how will you protect her?”

“I’ll just do the same, then.” Dong-sik returns the shove In-woo gave him earlier and re-inserts himself between them. “If I have to follow you around constantly, then I will. It’s not like we need to sleep. Or. I don’t think we do?”

In-woo makes a strange face. “Why would we need to? We’re ghosts. We don’t even have corporeal forms anymore. There shouldn’t be any need to eat or sleep.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought,” Dong-sik says, nodding, before he remembers what they were talking about. “Anyway! Don’t get any ideas!”

A flash of amusement appears on In-woo’s face before he’s monologuing again. “It’s far, _far_ too late for that. But as it stands, I can’t do anything to her yet, so I’ll leave her be for the time being.” He spins on his heel and begins walking back the way he came, but suddenly ascends through the ceiling.

“Wait! Don’t leave me behind!” Dong-sik yells. He spares one more glance at Bo-kyung, now speaking to another cop, and chases after In-woo after confirming one more time that she’s alive and well.

When he catches up to In-woo, he sees him exiting his office with an annoyed look on his face. Dong-sik almost thinks to ask, before he realizes that’ll just start another pointless fistfight between the two of them. So he just trails silently after In-woo, and finally takes the time to wonder how his poor family is going to take this news. He’s come to remember in the past few weeks just how much he cares for them, and they for him, and now he’s splattered on the sidewalk. Funny how he wound up in the same position he would have if he’d gone through with his suicide all those months ago.

He wants to pay them a visit, but he gets the feeling it would just be depressing. Besides, he has to stick to Seo In-woo like glue so he doesn’t try anything. 

They wander through the streets of Seoul until they arrive back at In-woo’s fancy apartment, which is still overrun by police and staff processing the scene. In-woo ignores them in favor of entering his secret room, but scowls when he sees that everything is being confiscated.

“Were you trying to get a weapon?” Dong-sik can’t help asking, and In-woo glares at him. He looks around the secret room, taking in the decor that he couldn’t appreciate earlier, and shudders at the memory of what transpired inside. 

“Ugh,” he can’t help saying, and In-woo’s scowl deepens.

“No one told you to follow me here.”

“I can’t very well leave you alone now that I know your plans. And I think I’m allowed to be a bit creeped out. I got stabbed in there, you know.”

“You did that to yourself!”

“You didn’t leave me much choice!”

“I actually left you with one very simple, very obvious choice, but you can never stand to make things easy for me,” In-woo grumbles as they float back out of the apartment and into the night. Dong-sik doesn’t know where he’s headed, but he gets the feeling it’s going to be a long time before daybreak.

\--

Being a ghost is strange. Dong-sik doesn’t really feel any sensations anymore, and his body just registers pain as an uncomfortable pressure. He can still hear and see, but he has no sense of taste or smell, and he currently still cannot touch anything besides In-woo, and presumably other ghosts. He still feels all his emotions, but he has no physical needs, like hunger or sleepiness. There’s one new feeling, a kind of low, almost electric awareness of his ghostly body. It mostly sits at his core, but sometimes he feels it in his limbs as well, though he doesn’t know what it means. New spiritual nerve endings, maybe.

Instinctively, he still tries to walk sometimes, but he’s quickly taken to floating along since it requires much less effort. 

He’s followed Seo In-woo to a public park, where they’re currently attempting to flick pebbles into the grass. They aren’t making any progress.

“Maybe we can’t do it because the rocks are too small,” Dong-sik says, after another fifty tries.

“That doesn’t make sense. It should be easier to move a smaller, lighter object.”

“Unless the surface area matters more than the weight? Like if there’s more to touch it’s easier to move?”

“Since we aren’t applying the same kind of force as a living person,” In-woo mutters as he thinks about it. “Then everything here is too small, or much too large.” With that decided, he floats away with saying anything further to Dong-sik.

“Hey!” Dong-sik scrambles upright and chases after him as he pseudo-strolls away down the street. He catches up easily at first, since In-woo isn’t moving very fast, but once they’re side by side, he picks up speed. Dong-sik hastens his own pace in accordance, and the cycle repeats again and again until they’re speed flying through the neighborhood. The nice thing about being dead is that it doesn’t matter how much more out of shape Dong-sik was compared to In-woo while they were alive. He’s able to keep pace without much trouble.

In-woo suddenly pulls to a hard stop, and Dong-sik trips over him as he overshoots by several meters.

“Are you going to just follow me around for the rest of your afterlife?” In-woo snaps, pushing Dong-sik when he comes floating back.

“Only as long as it takes for you to give up your quest for revenge,” Dong-sik says, stubbornly trailing after him again.

“Forget tangibility. I need to learn how to kill another ghost,” In-woo says under his breath, and Dong-sik kicks at his heels.

“Of course you do. There isn’t much on your mind besides murder, is there,” Dong-sik mutters to himself, not quietly enough, apparently, since In-woo turns abruptly and they almost collide.

“I liked you better when you were scared of me,” he growls, grasping Dong-sik by the chin and tilting his face up for their eyes to meet. Even in death his dark eyes are as piercing as ever, but by now Dong-sik actually finds it harder to look away.

“That’s a lie,” Dong-sik says, reaching over to pinch In-woo’s cheek. “You liked me most when you thought I was a serial killer and I thought you were an over-enthusiastic sales associate. What happened to us? Should we go back to those days? You pretend to be kind and friendly and I treat you like the nuisance we both know you are?”

In-woo, surprisingly, grins at this. A sharp, knife-cut of a smile that’s filled with the same delight he seems to get out of hunting people. Dong-sik should find it disturbing, but there’s something sickeningly fascinating about seeing the facade come down. 

Dong-sik’s hand releases his face as In-woo leans closer, until there are only a few scant centimeters between them. All the while, those eyes continue to pin him down with a frightening fervor, but Dong-sik refuses to flinch. “You’re right, I do prefer this attitude. Too bad it won’t be enough for you to stop me.” With that, he lets Dong-sik go and flies off at a more leisurely speed.

With a curse, Dong-sik takes off after him, determined not to lose him. But he doesn’t really have much reason to worry, because no matter where they go, neither of them can touch anything there. They fly past stores and office buildings and homes, but apparently none of them are suitable for In-woo’s needs.

“Can’t we just practice in a convenience store?” Dong-sik asks as they leave another neighborhood behind.

“Too many witnesses if we succeed,” In-woo says, which Dong-sik thought was kind of the point, but maybe In-woo’s still thinking with his criminal brain and not his ghost one. “Besides, I thought you would feel bad for knocking some teenage clerk’s merchandise around.”

“That’s true.”

Dong-sik tries to think of somewhere they could go where they wouldn’t disturb anyone. They could return to Daehan and muck around in one of the unoccupied offices, but Dong-sik suspects that neither of them are really up to seeing their coworkers. If only he knew of a building with no people but plenty of random stuff to screw around with. Wait. Actually.

“Oh, wait. That would be perfect. In-woo-ssi, stop for a moment.” He reaches out to latch onto the fabric of In-woo’s coat, but his companion doesn’t slow.

“Nope. If you fall behind, then so be it. One less problem for me to deal with.”

“No- stop being a jerk for three seconds and stop flying that way because I know a place,” he says impatiently, pulling harder on In-woo’s sleeve. “C’mon, it’s in this direction.”

“How can I trust that this isn’t a trap?” In-woo says, because he’s a paranoid weirdo.

“What? Where could I possibly trick you into going? Ghost prison? A shrine? Stop being a pain in my behind and come this way.” In-woo finally lets Dong-sik manhandle him into coming along, and they make their way toward Dong-sik’s beloved escape room.

“What is with you and this place?” In-woo asks when he sees where Dong-sik has brought him.

“I like it here. It’s private and has a lot of nice props. I guess I grew attached.”

“You do know it’s because you’re so predictable that I was able to listen in on your conversations with Shim Bo-kyung, don’t you?”

“If I’m so predictable,” Dong-sik counters as they make their way inside, “how come you weren’t able to kill me without dying yourself? You had so many opportunities.”

“If you want to flirt with death so badly, then I’ll gladly indulge you again,” In-woo says, breaking free of Dong-sik’s hand and gripping his throat tightly to choke him.

“Wait- stop that-” Dong-sik says as In-woo keeps trying to strangle him. He should’ve figured it would come to this again. In-woo needs an intervention; solving all his problems with homicide won’t get him very far anymore.

“It’s better for you to hurry your way to the next life, Yook Dong-sik.”

“It’s not going to work-”

“I’ll _make_ it work-”

“Seriously, In-woo-ssi- ack- it just kind of itches-”

\--

“No, use more force.”

“I _can’t_ \- I can’t even feel anything besides the little, you know- the whoosh.”

“There’s a surface- if you just press the right way, you can feel it for a nanosecond-”

“I’m telling you, I really can’t feel anything!” Dong-sik says as he phases through the pen again.

“You aren’t doing it correctly,” In-woo responds crabbily, wrapping his own hand around Dong-sik’s and puppeteering him toward the pen again. He pushes Dong-sik’s hand at the pen, but this attempt is no more successful than the last.

They’ve been at it for over a day now, because there’s nothing much to do as a ghost when no one can sense you. Dong-sik briefly considered the logic behind practicing spirit skills with the person he’s trying to stop from going on a posthumous murder spree, but honestly, it would probably be kind of lonely and boring without In-woo around, now that In-woo has realized that Dong-sik can’t be doubly murdered. At least this way, he has someone to sigh and scold him when he fails. Just like old times.

In-woo waves Dong-sik’s hand through the pen and the whole desk a few more times, before flinging his arm away in disgust. “We need to pinpoint where exactly we’re going wrong.”

Dong-sik gives up and tosses himself to the floor. It’s pointless; he’s still hovering, just prone now. “Maybe later. I’m exhausted. I didn’t think that was possible, but I still feel tired. Can ghosts even get tired?” he asks.

“Aren’t you more qualified to answer that question than I am?”

“We’ve been dead for the same amount of time, In-woo-ssi.”

“Not for that reason,” In-woo says, waving his hand irritably. “You watch all those horror movies. Surely some of them must land somewhere near the truth.”

“I don’t actually watch that many ghost movies. I prefer thrillers and slasher films,” Dong-sik says, thinking wistfully about his collection. “Also, are you implying that ghost movies are documentaries?” He snickers at the thought of In-woo watching a monster movie for research and taking notes.

In-woo tries to kick the lamp off the desk at him, and utterly fails.

Dong-sik wastes some time just flying around the escape room premises on his back and thinking about the books he never finished reading. In-woo, meanwhile, hovers at the employee desk and stares out the window to people-watch. Maybe it’s a hobby of his. He had to learn about his victims somehow.

Dong-sik isn’t really paying him much mind until he sits forward and says, “Wait. I think that woman is a ghost.”

“What? Really?”

Dong-sik joins him by the window, and they peer out at a woman with a brightly-patterned dress and a distinctly ‘70s hairstyle flying past. They watch as she lowers herself to the street and then kicks an empty drink bottle toward the rubbish bins before floating on.

“She’s a ghost,” Dong-sik says urgently, shaking In-woo’s shoulder. “She’s a ghost but she just kicked that bottle!”

“We can’t let her get away,” In-woo says, already halfway through the wall. Dong-sik follows him out, and they begin flying as quickly as they can after their mystery ghost, who looks to be lining up for the bus?

“Wait!” Dong-sik yells as she advances forward in line. “Please stop! Miss Ghost! We have to ask you something!”

The woman turns, and her eyes go wide when she sees them. She gets out of line and meets them next to a tree, looking mildly amused by their desperation.

“Oh, it’s you two. You’re on the news all the time. How weird; it’s kind of like meeting a celebrity! Funny that you’re hanging out together, though.”

“Yes. It’s extremely entertaining,” In-woo says flatly. “How are you able to pick up objects?” he asks, cutting right to the chase.

“Right, you’re still new to this,” she says. “You’ve tried to push and pull things already? Any success?”

“No. We can’t interact with anything besides each other.”

“Ah, it must be because you’re not putting in any energy,” she says, reaching up to pluck a leaf off the tree, before letting it fall to the ground. “When you were alive you had a physical form that could interact with your surroundings, but now we’re just kind of...masses of spiritual energy? And unless you direct that energy into the objects you want to touch, you just move through them. You know that kind of buzzy feeling around your ribs?”

“Yes,” Dong-sik says, nodding rapidly. In-woo says nothing but continues listening to her intently.

“You need to channel that to make yourself more tangible, or use it directly on physical things to move them around. You, Mr. Predator. Put that energy into your hand and try to touch the pole. You have to move some of it from your chest to where you want it to go and imagine it- ah, filling whatever limb you want to use? Let it flow right in there.” 

Dong-sik is surprised when In-woo calmly does as she says instead of bristling at her order. He watches closely as In-woo reaches out his hand and pushes against the utility pole beside them. For a few seconds, his palm rests against the metal before he phases through again.

“You did it!” Dong-sik exclaims, latching on happily to In-woo’s other arm as he stares at his hand in something akin to wonder.

“Good job!” the woman says, clapping her hands with joy. “Now you try it,” she tells Dong-sik, who releases In-woo and extends his own arm. He thinks about that ball of electric feeling inside his chest and imagines pulling it into his hand instead. The warm static sensation flows slowly until it reaches his palm and fingers, where he lets it pool up as he presses his hand gingerly against the pole. The surface presses back for a short moment before his concentration breaks, and the energy retreats back into his chest. His hand slips through the pole, but he doesn’t even care. The taste of success is too exciting.

“Nice work! Next, try pushing that energy outside of your body, into another object and see what happens.”

Dong-sik presses his finger against a twig on the tree and follows her instruction. This time, the leaves on the twig rustle violently, as if being hit by a stream of wind.

“Perfect!” she says. “Pulling is harder,” she says as she tugs the fallen leaf back to her hand with a shimmery stream of energy. It looks like the heat distortion of a hot summer’s day. “You need to learn how to make your energy an extension of yourself, which you’ll figure out after practicing the other two skills.”

“By learning to manipulate it after pushing it outside our bodies,” In-woo says, and she nods.

“Yes, think of it as an extra limb,” she says, carrying the leaf with that same distorted space from her open palm to the top of Dong-sik’s head without moving any part of her body. It flutters back through Dong-sik to land on the ground.

Dong-sik claps, impressed by the display, and she laughs.

“There are a bunch of other things you will figure out on your own eventually. Making yourself visible, haunting dreams, screwing with electrical lines — just mess around with your energy and see what happens. Don’t overextend yourself though, or you’ll regret it.”

“Thank you, miss,” Dong-sik says with a wobbly voice, moved by her kindness. “We really, really appreciate it.”

“No problem! That’s my ride,” she says, pointing at the bus pulling up to the stop. “Good luck! Show me what you’ve got if we ever run into each other again. See ya.” 

“Thank you again!” Dong-sik calls as he watches her phase up into the bus and take hold of an empty hand strap. When he returns his attention to In-woo, he sees him trying to lean his weight against the utility pole. For a second, he looks cool, lounging there fashionably like he’s waiting for someone, and then he tumbles right through and collapses to the ground.

“Let’s go back inside,” Dong-sik says through his laugh, averting his eyes when In-woo glowers at him for giggling at his mishap.

They practice doing as their spiritual advisor said, and Dong-sik finally manages to drop the stupid pen on the ground. In-woo gives him a congratulatory pat on the back before he remembers himself, and then he sends Dong-sik spinning through the air with a push. Dong-sik just rolls his eyes, because he knows by now that In-woo’s emotional intelligence is probably at the same level as a first grader’s.

After hours of work, they succeed in flipping the wig off the mannequin and ripping a piece of paper while working together. Dong-sik wouldn’t say that the work is easy — and in fact, that same tiredness he didn’t know he could feel has started seeping back into his body — and it’s more than a little repetitive. All the same, he thinks he and In-woo might actually be having fun.

They take a momentary break and Dong-sik notices that the sun has long since risen. He looks out the window and wonders why he’s stuck on the realization that it’s daytime again.

“Oh. It’s been three days,” he says blankly, looking over at In-woo who stares impassively back. Three days dead and ready for the afterlife. “I should- I should visit, shouldn’t I? I didn’t want to see them crying over me, but I- I think I should go see how they’re doing.”

He still hasn’t really started coping with his new state of being. Focusing on trying to hone his spirit powers and keeping a close eye on In-woo has left him blissfully too busy to think about everybody he left behind. But his funeral is today, and he suddenly craves the closure of seeing them send him off. They don’t need to know that he’s still marooned here in the living world.

“I’m- I’ll be going, then,” he says, nodding awkwardly at In-woo and moving toward the external wall.

It isn’t a request for company, but when the other man nods after a brief moment and follows him out, Dong-sik feels a buoyant sense of relief that he isn’t facing this alone.

“Let’s go.”

\--

Dong-sik’s funeral is shockingly well-attended. 

Dong-sik’s family looks like they’ve been through the wringer, but still, his father puts on his brave face and receives visitors with the stoic strength he always tried to instill in Dong-sik, even though Dong-sik can tell he’s barely holding himself together. His brother in law is helping where he can, while Dong-sik’s stepmother cries quietly and Ji-yeon receives condolences through her tears. Dong-chan’s face wavers, but he stands by his mother’s side, doing his best to look older than his eighteen years. Dong-sik feels ashamed of not being able to support his parents or his younger brother any longer when he sees them, and decides not to float too close lest he break down into tears and give them all pneumonia by trying to hug them.

Chil-sung is stationed at the entryway, like some kind of sentinel, and though he doesn’t cry, his eyes are red. Dong-sik wants to pat him on the back, but he’s afraid that the contact will disturb him into crying, and it would be better not to let that happen.

In-woo and Dong-sik watch for a while from the hallway as mourners come by to pay their respects. Daehan employees, neighborhood association folks, former classmates, and even Bo-kyung’s fellow officers all make an appearance, though Dong-sik is too embarrassed to listen to the nice things they’re saying about him. Some of these people he’s only talked to a handful of times in his life, and others are people he was certain wouldn’t remember him. All in all, it’s a surreal experience to see them crying over him, foolish old doormat Yook Dong-sik.

“I didn’t think that he even knew who I was,” Dong-sik says as he sees a senior from his college film club walk in.

“You’re very memorable,” In-woo says with a wry twist to his lips. Somehow Dong-sik doesn’t think he intends it entirely as an insult.

They don’t stay long enough to see Bo-kyung, which is for the best. Dong-sik doesn’t want In-woo to try and kill her in the middle of his funeral.

  


They don’t attend In-woo’s.

“You aren’t curious?” Dong-sik asks on their way back to the escape room. It had been upsetting knowing that he couldn’t say anything to reassure his family, but it had been comforting to see them regardless.

In-woo scoffs, and brushes some invisible spirit dirt off himself. “What’s there to be curious about? I know exactly what it must look like over there.”

“Still, i-isn’t there anybody you want to see?” 

It’s a stupid question. Dong-sik already knows the answer, and it’s confirmed by the disgusted noise In-woo makes.

“Who would I want to see? A sister with whom I had no bond beside the blood we shared? A stepmother who is most certainly celebrating my death? A brother who has always been handed everything that I worked myself to exhaustion to achieve? Or the gawking masses, here to pay witness to a last moment of indignity for the infamous predator killer, who left this world without a single person to mourn his departure? As long as they honor my final arrangements, I don’t care who’s there, or what they do.”

He doesn’t look at Dong-sik as he speaks, which is for the best. Under the force of that gaze, Dong-sik would feel compelled to answer, and there’s nothing he can say that wouldn’t sound like a trite platitude. He wants to ask about In-woo’s final instructions, but he suspects they might be similar to his own. There’s only one person In-woo ever really seemed to care about, after all.

Dong-sik had pieced together some level of the Seo family’s dysfunction before all this, but it’s in this moment that he finally comes to see how alone In-woo has truly been all this time.

How alone he would still be, if he didn’t have Dong-sik.

And it’s not enough reason to forgive him all his sins, but it’s enough reason to regret that no one ever cared about trying to change him until it was too late. It’s enough reason to make Dong-sik hope that in a kinder universe they crossed paths sooner.

\--

After their little excursion, they return to training, and actually make some headway in their ability to interact with the physical world. Now, Dong-sik can perch himself on top of chairs and tables and rattle windows and curtains. In-woo manages to push most things off the desk, and they’ve begun to gather the control needed to pick things up and put them back.

Once they’re strong enough to crumple paper, they spend an entire day pelting each other with destroyed paperwork from the escape room office. They graduate to clips and markers once they can, and then have a minor fistfight when Dong-sik accidentally breaks a highlighter and gets ink all over the notecard tower In-woo was apparently building.

It takes another week, but In-woo manages to pick up and fling a fake knife across the room, and in doing so, unfortunately reawakens his desire for vengeance in full force. Dong-sik shadows him all around Bo-kyung’s family cafe and her apartment to prevent him from doing anything. It’s quite annoying. Dong-sik really needs to introduce him to some new hobbies.

One afternoon, In-woo finally tries to corner her while she’s at home on her day off, so Dong-sik gives him a hard kick in the face and flies on ahead to station himself in Bo-kyung’s room. In-woo looks royally pissed off when he arrives, and Dong-sik puts his fists up in preparation.

“Back off,” Dong-sik warns him, shuffling to put himself up as a blockade for Bo-kyung, who keeps reading her book undisturbed.

“Or what, you’ll hit me with a pillow?” In-woo asks, unimpressed. He gestures at the empty space between them, and Dong-sik groans. With no weapons at his disposal, he’ll just have to fight In-woo the old-fashioned way. They stare each other down for a minute before In-woo makes a dash for Bo-kyung’s bookcase.

In-woo tries to grab a heavy looking bookend and Dong-sik tackles him before he can reach. They go sailing through the floor and into the room downstairs.

“Would you just quit it?” Dong-sik demands, aggrieved by how difficult it is to hold In-woo down. He’s resorted to wrapping his legs tight around In-woo’s own like a koala, and trying to hug his arms in place. They go bouncing around as In-woo attempts to shake him off.

“Haven’t you already done enough to her?” he cries out as In-woo kicks one leg free. “Besides, she isn’t really the one that you’re angry with!”

“You think I don’t harbor enough hatred in my heart to share some with Bo-kyung-ssi?” In-woo asks as he tries to pry Dong-sik’s fingers off his arm. Bo-kyung’s mother passes by on her way to the kitchen, happily unaware of the grappling match happening in her living room.

“I think you’re mad that you couldn’t punish her for catching onto you, but that you don’t hate her nearly as much as you hate me, or your family. You already shoved her father down an elevator shaft! You held her hostage, burned her neck, and killed her friend! Isn’t that enough?”

For a heartbeat or two, In-woo seems to consider this, his hands going slightly slack around Dong-sik’s own. And then he sees Bo-kyung coming down the stairs and growls out, “No.”

He breaks his legs free from Dong-sik’s and begins crawl-flying toward her, while eying the knife block on the counter above. In desperation, Dong-sik flings his arms tight around In-woo’s leg and sinks his teeth into In-woo’s stabbing hand, getting a mouthful of spectral thumb.

“Are you a child?” In-woo snaps as he flops back down, away from the knives. He tries to shake Dong-sik, who just digs his fingers into In-woo’s thighs and further secures his chomp.

In-woo struggles for another minute before settling for floating sideways and dragging Dong-sik by way of his teeth out of the house. “Let go. Now.”

Dong-sik glares at him and bites down even harder as he points at Bo-kyung’s house with a leg. He licks the part of In-woo’s gloved palm that’s inside his mouth, and In-woo shudders.

“Fine, I will not kill Shim Bo-kyung today, so get your filthy mouth off me.” He pushes the pad of his thumb up against Dong-sik’s palate, trying to irritate him enough to let go. Dong-sik finally decides to give in because it’s probably the best promise he’s going to get. He releases In-woo’s hand, but leaves behind a lot of ghost saliva. In-woo, looking absolutely disgusted, grabs Dong-sik and wipes all the slobber onto his turtleneck. Dong-sik watches it vanish and wonders about the state of spectral laundry.

“Can’t you please find something else to do?” Dong-sik asks tiredly as he floats back into a standing position. Just because he’s not in pain doesn’t mean he’s not winded from their fight. In-woo is in a similar state. “You can have other interests besides murder and revenge, you know.”

In-woo scoffs. “Like what? There’s no point in jogging anymore, since we fly everywhere.” 

“I don’t know! You could go watch a movie, or go bowling, or pick up flower arrangement? You could go ghost-skiing! Or try to dive into the ocean or something! Just leave Bo-kyung-ssi and everyone alone!”

“Ghosts can’t wear skis,” is what In-woo chooses to comment on. Dong-sik resists the urge to shake him.

“Well, just fly down the mountain, then. We could even go climb into a volcano or something! Or take a plane to Hawaii! Or go to the beach! There’s a whole world out there and we have all the time you could possibly need.” 

In-woo looks startled by this discovery, as if it hadn’t occurred to him exactly how much free time they have now. Of course, they’d spent the last few weeks single-mindedly trying to learn how to pick up pencils, so maybe that delayed the realization that they no longer have meetings to attend or reports to write or clients to call. 

“What do people do with so much leisure time?” he asks, uncomprehending. Dong-sik realizes that he probably never had the chance just to hang out or play with friends as a child, and it all snowballed from there. Maybe that’s why he chose such a bad hobby. So he throws an arm around In-woo’s back and forcibly steers him away from Bo-kyung’s house.

“It’s time for you to find out.”

\--

They go to Haeundae Beach.

Even flying there would be inefficient, so they use their new abilities to hitch a ride on the train. There’s something kind of illicitly fun about it, and Dong-sik takes the chance to lie down on the luggage rack, while In-woo sits primly in an empty seat and creepily observes the living passengers around them.

It’s not really a good time to visit the sea, so there aren’t as many people on the beach as usual when they arrive. For a few minutes they just stand on a sand dune and look out at the clouds drifting above turquoise waters. Dong-sik is glad nobody can see them because they’re fully bundled in their black coats and look absurdly out of place among the families and couples. 

“Have you...gone swimming before?” Dong-sik thinks to ask while In-woo watches some children pass by in floaties. He wonders if it’s tactless to ask what kind of normal people activities In-woo missed out on so he knows what they should try next.

“Of course. The academy I attended had state-of-the-art swimming facilities,” In-woo says as he digs a divot into the sand with the toe of his shoe.

“Ah. Obviously.” He’s about to ask In-woo if he would like to test out those swimming skills now, when two people row by in a canoe. “Oh, that looks fun. Bo-kyung-ssi says she and Taek-soo-ssi tried that together once. They invited me to join them next time,” he says mindlessly to himself, thinking about all the normal people activities _he’s_ missed out on, now that he’s dead.

“Were you in love with her?” In-woo asks suddenly. The curiosity on his face seems almost innocent, as if they’re just two guys discussing teenage infatuations, instead of diametrically opposed phantom enemies. Then again, they _are_ on a beach trip together. 

“I- with Bo-kyung-ssi? No, I- we’re just friends! Were friends. It was never like that,” Dong-sik says, getting flustered despite himself. Maybe if things had gone a bit differently, but not in this lifetime. In-woo’s mouth folds down slightly at the corners as if he doesn’t quite buy into it.

“For you, perhaps. Maybe she liked you.”

“What? No way. Bo-kyung-ssi and I- haha, no.” Dong-sik waves his arms in the air to brush away this wacky notion. “Bo-kyung-ssi is smart and pretty, and I’m just a chump.”

“No, you have some appeal,” In-woo says, cocking his head as he gives Dong-sik a once over. “You’re soft like tofu, which some people like. Your fluffy hair makes you look boyishly cute. Symmetric features and good teeth, which make for a nice smile.”

“T-thank you?” Dong-sik stutters out, baffled by this turn in conversation. It isn’t every day that your former boss turned mutual murderer compliments your looks like he’s reading a grocery list. In-woo studies him for another few seconds, looking thoughtful.

“Anyway, it might be that chumps are her type. I confessed my feelings to her, but she wasn’t very enthused about it.” 

Dong-sik does a double take and almost falls into the sand. “Wait, were _you_ in love with her?” In some twisted way, Dong-sik could see how In-woo’s obsessive pursuit of Bo-kyung while trying to keep her in check might have bloomed into a distorted affection. But he’s glad when In-woo makes a derisive noise at the thought.

“What? No, of course not. I...respected her, I suppose. She noticed what I was up to when no one else did, which made her a unique obstacle. I was willing to keep her under my thumb instead of eliminating her, but she turned down my confession.” He wrinkles his nose, looking comically offended. “I can’t understand why, unless there was somebody else.”

Dong-sik can’t help but to chuckle at the utter bemusement on In-woo’s face. “Right, because you’re so amazing that nobody would turn you down for any other reason.”

“Well, yes. Look at me,” he says gesturing from his face down the rest of his body, and Dong-sik laughs even harder.

“You’re so full of yourself, Director Seo,” he says fondly, reaching out to pat In-woo on the shoulder.

Now In-woo’s annoyed confusion is directed at Dong-sik. “Am I undesirable? I’m rich, reasonably handsome, and well-respected. Occasionally nice, even. Aren’t those considered attractive qualities?” He seems so truly baffled by this, as if the concept of attraction is something he’s studied but doesn’t comprehend. Perhaps it is. Somehow it’s cute.

“You _were_ rich and well-respected. And you faked being nice very well. Now you’re just handsome.”

“Yes, but at the time I still had all that going for me, and she still-” He clicks his tongue in annoyance. “She could have had it all. It would have been much easier if she’d given in.”

“Do you think so?” Dong-sik asks, trying to imagine them as a couple. For some reason the thought makes him annoyed. “You’re a great actor, but even you probably couldn’t fake being in love with someone for the rest of your life.”

“No? Isn’t it just more of the same? With just a little more intimacy and focus…”

He reaches over toward Dong-sik, who freezes, and cups his gloved fingertips at the curve of Dong-sik’s jaw, tilting his head up gently. Dong-sik holds his nonexistent breath as In-woo leans in, their eyes never breaking contact. His gaze has softened from its usual frosty glare, and his warm smile is far from the deranged, serial killer grin that Dong-sik has grown used to seeing recently. He really does look like the gentleman he spent so long pretending to be, and Dong-sik feels like his phantom pulse is picking up to hummingbird speed as In-woo’s other hand comes forward to carefully rest on his hip, the thumb pressed lightly against Dong-sik’s waist as he holds him in place.

“Dong-sik-ah,” he says, his tone betraying an affection that anyone would buy into if they could hear him, “Do you doubt the depth of my feelings for you?”

Dong-sik blinks rapidly at him, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights. Why is he standing so close? Why is Dong-sik letting him? “No- I mean, yes? No wait, your feelings are that you still hate me very much, obviously,” he garbles out, hoping he doesn’t sound as delirious as he feels.

In-woo’s eyebrows draw together pensively, and he looks genuinely hurt, a frown creasing his pretty mouth. “How could I ever hate the love of my life?” he asks quietly, his hand tightening around Dong-sik’s hip. Dong-sik feels like his heart is going to explode and his brain is melting, because _what is happening??_ His poor mind cannot compute it.

“You- what-”

“I’d be inconsolable if I ever lost you,” In-woo murmurs. “After all, we’re just so very much in love, aren’t we?” His voice warps back into his usual wry tone, and he flicks Dong-sik in the forehead after letting go of his face.

“Ow,” Dong-sik says even though nothing hurts except his pride.

“Admit it, I sold that performance,” In-woo says smugly.

Dong-sik gapes at him before groaning in irritation and scrubbing his hand violently at the spot on his cheek where the sensation of In-woo’s hand seems to linger. “I- I mean, I suppose that was pretty believable,” he mutters, putting some space between them to relieve his antsy nerves. “But I don’t think you could stand doing it every day for decades.”

In-woo straightens, looking completely like his usual non-romantic self again. “You aren’t wrong. Even trying to lure Shim Bo-kyung in was trouble enough. _You_ rejected me several times as well,” he says sourly.

Dong-sik’s laugh teeters past nervous. “Well, I had a lot going on in my life at the time.” And thank goodness for that, because if this is the level of effort that In-woo normally brings, he might have been worn down eventually. “Anyhow, let’s go into the water! I bet we can see some really cool stuff now that we don’t have to worry about breathing.”

“We’re wearing winter clothing.”

“We also can’t get wet. Come on,” Dong-sik says, grabbing In-woo by the elbow and dragging him past the scant beach towels and umbrellas toward the sea. “Let’s try to see a shark!”

“If there were a shark so close to the coast this beach would be shut down already,” In-woo says, but allows Dong-sik to wrangle him down into the water. 

Beneath the waves everything glows an ethereal blue, and the number of fish they see a little further out is actually kind of astounding. It’s more immersive than an aquarium, though the fish still naturally swim away to avoid touching either of them. Animals must have a better sense for spirits than humans do.

Dong-sik spends a lot of time trying to dig up pretty seashells that keep getting swept out of reach by the churning waves. He finally gets hold of one he likes before he remembers that he can’t actually put anything in his pockets, so he chucks it toward the shore in hopes that it’ll wash up on the beach one day for someone else to pick up.

With his shell endeavors rendered pointless, he looks around for his companion and finds him hanging motionless in the water.

In-woo lies suspended in the sea, with his arms outstretched and his face turned toward the sunbeams that can’t penetrate all the way down to their depths. His eyes are open, but for once his face isn’t warped by malicious intent or a pleasant mask. He just seems empty and weightless, like he’s let something go. For a second, Dong-sik is afraid that he’s going to pass on, but he continues to lie there in his free-fall, still caught between worlds like Dong-sik.

There’s something both melancholy and liberated about the way he looks that makes Dong-sik reluctant to disturb him, so he doesn’t. 

He just lays himself flat in his own spot a few meters away and spreads his limbs wide the same way, tilting his head up toward a sky he can’t see, in a world he’s only just begun to experience again. Everything seems suddenly too vast and infinite, so he grounds himself by looking at the only thing he knows for sure he can touch, and whiles away the minutes wondering what he might find under all of Seo In-woo’s defenses and complications.

By now, they each have an almost uncomfortable understanding of the other, down to the hidden parts no one else has been able to uncover.

Is there any chance that they still have time to change?

\--

When they return from the beach they spend another day with Dong-sik doggedly stalking In-woo around as he doggedly stalks Bo-kyung around. She still looks worn-down and sad, but she throws herself wholeheartedly into patrol, and at least Taek-soo is there to support her. Dong-sik wishes he could say something to her, to tell her it wasn’t her fault and that she did the best she could, but all he can do is watch her from afar.

Halfway through her shift, In-woo veers away from her patrol car and heads off in some random direction. Dong-sik almost trips in midair trying to dash after him.

“Have you given up on Bo-kyung-ssi?” Dong-sik asks hopefully as they leave her farther and farther behind. He noticed In-woo looking more and more indifferent as time passed, which is much better than when he still looked gleefully murderous.

In-woo sneers at him but says, “For now. I have other targets on my list I can handle first. Let Shim Bo-kyung continue her pointless existence as an officer wasting her talents looking for lost wallets.”

Dong-sik decides not to mention the weird sideways compliment and asks, “Then what do you want to do today? Should we go fishing? Or see if we’re good enough to play cards?”

In-woo looks supremely disappointed with Dong-sik’s choice in activities. “Cards? No. If I’m going to be a ghost, I may as well do ghost things. Like haunting people.”

Oh no, not again. “Who...exactly are you thinking of haunting?” Dong-sik asks warily.

In-woo’s smile would be charming if it weren’t clearly evil. “Who else? My dearest, udon-for-brains little brother, obviously,” he says, pointing at the television playing in the electronics store they’re passing. Seo Ji-hoon is giving a press conference they can’t hear, and he looks kind of awful. Not as bad as when In-woo was holding him hostage, but he doesn’t have the same jaunty, smug attitude he used to when he made illegal trades and hung around strip clubs.

“I don’t know, he looks pretty pathetic already,” Dong-sik says. In-woo tsks at him.

“Don’t be fooled. After a month or two, when he realizes he finally has free rein to drive Daehan into the ground, he’ll be back to his usual, frivolous, conniving self.”

“Maybe you should wait until then. I’d feel bad coming for him now, while he’s already down.”

“He’s a terrible boss and his personality is odious,” In-woo says, looking unimpressed with Dong-sik’s reasoning. “He tried to frame you not only for his own failings, but also for sexual harassment of one of your coworkers. You tried to kill him yourself.”

“Okay, yes, all those things are true,” Dong-sik admits, “but he also just lost both his father and his brother in the span of a few days. He’s probably still emotionally fragile right now. He’s horrible, but I don’t want us to drive him to suicide or anything.”

“Wouldn’t the world be better off without him?”

“No! I mean, that’s not something we can decide, and he can always improve, right?”

“Can he?” In-woo looks skeptical. “He’s spent thirty years being scum; that seems like enough time to grow out of it.”

“Yeah, but he was raised in your family, and you’re all, um. Abnormal?”

In-woo shrugs, conceding the point. “Don’t bother being tactful. We’re awful.”

“Right. Okay, but now your father is dead and he doesn’t have to compete with you anymore, so he- he might be susceptible to other influences. Maybe we can- I don’t know, rehabilitate him? Make him a better person?”

In-woo lets out a bitter laugh. “Do you think it’s that easy? To undo decades of our upbringing?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s possible. I think I would’ve…” Dong-sik trails off before he says what he was thinking, but In-woo catches on anyway. This time his laugh inches toward hysterical.

“What, you would have wanted to rehabilitate me? _Fix_ me? Save my soul? Make me into a good, proper member of society just like you, Yook Dong-sik?”

Dong-sik scrubs a hand through his hair in frustration. “Yes? Maybe? I think you and I are much more alike than you want to admit, now that you really know me, and that if each of our lives had been a little bit different, we might not have ended up like this. If we’d met earlier...”

Dong-sik isn’t conceited enough to assume that In-woo could be changed through only his influence, but if young In-woo had had a few people on his side who saw what he really needed and got him some damn therapy instead of pushing him into becoming a ruthless, violent maniac? If he’d had a friend, or a living parent who cared, or a support system that didn’t fill his head with outrageous ideas about the world? Maybe he could have at least kept his unsavory interests in check.

Dong-sik isn’t interested in transforming him into a completely different person. Seo In-woo wouldn’t be himself if he weren't clever and manipulative and ambitious. But Dong-sik would probably still wind up liking him despite himself if only In-woo were a little less homicidal. Even now, if Dong-sik could get him onto a better path...if Dong-sik could help him try and become even a degree kinder...

“Don’t be naive. I would have always turned out like this,” In-woo says when he notices Dong-sik watching him morosely.

“We don’t know that,” Dong-sik retorts, but then he shakes his head. “In any case, this isn’t about you. This is about your brother, who isn’t really much like you at all, besides your petty, egotistical, rich-person attitudes. If you want to haunt him so badly, we should aim to get something out of it.”

“What more incentive do I need beside the thrill of tormenting him?” In-woo asks. His tone is dry, but his body-language seems open, so Dong-sik presses on.

“The satisfaction of leaving your company in the hands of someone who isn’t a complete garbage bag?”

In-woo’s mouth quirks into the slightest smile at that before it vanishes. “Not good enough. I’m dead now and my name is synonymous with ‘despised psychotic serial murderer;’ Daehan’s fallen reputation can’t besmirch mine any further.”

“Okay,” Dong-sik says, pacing around the street as he thinks. “How about this: the satisfaction of turning Ji-hoon into your puppet even after death. He was always a thorn in your side, right? A worthless fool who could get away with doing whatever he wanted because you were always there to clean up the mess? But now you’re gone, your father is gone, and he’s left all alone at the top — still worthless, still despicable, still utterly helpless — wouldn’t it feel good to finally terrify him into doing what you tell him to do, because he knows he’s hopeless without your help? Wouldn’t it be great to use his fear to motivate him into becoming your pawn, to know that his fate is entirely in your hands and that there’s nothing he can do to stop you from disposing of him whenever you want? We would have absolute power over him; with that amount of control it would be so easy to force him to become the person we want him to be...”

Dong-sik finally stops talking when he notices he may have gone overboard. But In-woo is looking at him like a revelation, his eyes wide with pleasure, and it sends a chill down Dong-sik’s spine.

“Sometimes I wonder how you disappointed me so badly when you came so close to being perfect,” In-woo says, sounding slightly breathless.

Dong-sik’s non-corporeal skin feels hot. He wonders if In-woo has any idea how fiercely the flame of his attention burns, an entire conflagration in his eyes, as if the object of his focus is the only thing in the universe worth looking at. And then Dong-sik wonders when he started expecting to be viewed this way. 

“Does that mean you’re on board?” he finally asks after clearing his throat. 

The dark fire of In-woo’s gaze dwindles into something both more tame and more sly. “Sure, after that pitch, why not. I could always kill him later if the reformation doesn’t take.”

“Um, we’ll re-negotiate that when the time comes.”

In-woo smiles to himself like he has absolutely no intention to do anything of the sort, but joke’s on him, Dong-sik is thoroughly committed to this “no more murder” (after)lifestyle. He’s saved Ji-hoon’s life before; it can’t be any harder to save him again.

But if all goes well, he won’t have to worry about that at all. Maybe In-woo will cooperate this time around.

\--

Just haunting Ji-hoon in person doesn’t seem very effective when neither of them can make themselves visible to humans yet. So it’s back to training.

Dong-sik is pretty sure that if he can spread his energy throughout his entire body, he could probably make himself visible again. It’s mostly a matter of control, and luckily he has plenty of time to practice. The one issue is that since he and In-woo can already see each other, they have no idea if their efforts are leading anywhere.

“We need to test it on someone,” In-woo says one evening after they manage to fry a streetlamp for fun.

“Electrocution?” Dong-sik says, aghast, and In-woo rolls his eyes. 

“No, you fool. Our visibility. We’re never going to figure it out on our own.”

“Oh, right. Um, okay, let’s go give some people a little harmless scare.”

“Harmless?” In-woo asks as Dong-sik brings them to an old spot he remembers from his youth: an abandoned elementary school a couple of neighborhoods over, where stupid teens used to dare each other to stay the night.

“We’re going to one of those ‘haunted’ spots, since anyone visiting will already expect to see something scary. We won’t jump out at them or anything — just turn it on and see if anyone reacts.”

“How do you know if anybody will come?” In-woo asks once they’re standing at the top of a staircase near the school entrance. He keeps peeking over the rail in interest, and Dong-sik realizes that terrifying children in a dusty, deserted school is likely high on his list of interests.

“It’s a Friday and there’s nothing much to do in this area. I’m sure some poor dimwit will get suckered into exploring to impress their friends.” He was actually thinking they might run into other ghosts while here, but so far nobody has appeared.

“Were you that dimwit?”

“...maybe.”

“Did you see a ghost?” In-woo asks, looking horribly entertained. He watches Dong-sik sometimes like he’s having the time of his life, and it softens all his long, straight lines into something approachable, something affectionate, like a panther turned housecat. It makes the space in Dong-sik’s chest ache with something other than the usual fizzing hum of his energy.

“No, but I did get locked in a hall closet by some classmates,” Dong-sik sighs, and In-woo laughs. The way his eyes crinkle makes him seem younger, freer, and for some reason, it hurts.

“How did you ever mistake yourself for a serial killer?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Dong-sik grumbles. Below them, the sound of footsteps and nervous tittering emerges. In-woo seems to brighten with excitement, and Dong-sik is belatedly glad he didn’t think to bring a knife or anything with him.

“Wait, wait, let’s move back a bit so if we scare them they don’t fall down the stairs and break their necks,” Dong-sik says, scooting toward the wall.

“Don’t you get tired of being so considerate all the time?” In-woo says with exasperation, but he follows. 

Soon enough, a trio of teens come tiptoeing up the stairs and waving flashlights around. They’re talking quietly among themselves about how stupid this dare is, which makes In-woo’s smile widen.

“Don’t scare them too badly,” Dong-sik hisses, and In-woo waves him off.

“I’m just going to give them something to talk about at school tomorrow.” He steps forward, and this time, when one girl pans her flashlight across the landing, she shrieks and drops it to the floor with a clatter.

“W-what was that? You saw it too, r-right?”

“Hyo-jin, there’s nothing there,” her friend says, handing her back her flashlight. “Look,” he says, as he shines a light on In-woo. “See, it’s just- aaaAAGGH!” he yells as In-woo waves. In his long black coat and with that disturbing grin plastered on his face, it’s no wonder all of them run screaming back down the stairs.

“In-woo-ssi,” Dong-sik says sternly, and In-woo looks innocently back at him.

“All I did was wave. And now we know they can see _something_ , though we have no indication how clear the image was or if we’re strong enough to communicate yet.” They figured that concentrating energy in the mouth and throat would lead to audible speech, but they have no proof yet.

“Should we try saying something next time?” Dong-sik asks as he phases his head through the floor to see if any more kids are coming. Unfortunately, the hallway looks to be empty.

“Let’s return tomorrow,” In-woo says quickly, which is when Dong-sik realizes he may have unleashed a monster. But they have no other way of knowing, so he agrees.

The next night, Dong-sik gives it a try, hovering close and saying hello once he’s visible. Two kids take off shrieking right away and one tries to punch Dong-sik in the face. Luckily he’s still intangible, so the kid just stumbles through him before running away. Sadly for them, In-woo is waiting at the bottom of the stairs, flickering in and out of sight, so they all scramble out of the building in tears.

They don’t actually learn much from this encounter, so they come back again the following night, much to In-woo’s delight and Dong-sik’s shame. News of the haunted school has apparently spread, so at least there are fresh batches of foolish students ready to brave the encounter.

While they’re in the neighborhood, Dong-sik decides to drop in on his family first to see how they’re doing. It’s been over a month since his funeral now, and life has moved on. He’s hoping that they’re trying to too.

In-woo follows him to the Meat Republic, and they stand at the windows and watch as Dong-sik’s family bustles around because business is booming now that people know Dong-sik isn’t the predator killer. 

“Oh, Chil-sung-ssi!” Dong-sik exclaims when he sees a glimpse of his friend in the kitchen. “So he decided to start working here. That’s great; better than what he was doing before.”

“What was he doing before?”

“Honestly, not much.”

They float their way inward and Dong-sik trails after his father and stepmother as they bring out platters of meat and serve drinks. Ji-yeon and her husband must be busy, but Dong-chan is helping the part-timers clean up. He seems even taller than Dong-sik remembered.

“Are you going to reveal yourself?” In-woo asks as he toys with a shot glass, rotating it around with his fingertip until it rattles onto the table.

“No, I’d probably give them all heart attacks. I just wanted to see how they were doing.”

“They seem as lively as ever,” In-woo says. Dong-sik is actually a bit touched that he didn’t say anything mean. 

“They’re resilient,” he says fondly as they leave the restaurant. “They’ll be okay.”

Upon returning to their haunting grounds, they split up to put their plan into action. In-woo heads inside to practice his visuals while Dong-sik hangs around the little crowd of students milling outside the school to try and do some reconnaissance. After listening for a few minutes while they decide who goes inside, he gathers enough names and returns to the entrance before the kids get there.

“Okay, they’re coming in,” he says, flashing In-woo a thumbs-up. In-woo doesn’t return it, but he does fly down the left corridor. Dong-sik waits in the lobby as the kids enter and begin playing rock paper scissors to decide who goes where. Everyone jumps as a loud clatter comes from the dark hallway where In-woo is hiding.

“You go check out that side,” one of the winners says, pointing that way, and the loser group groans good-naturedly as they comply. The rest break into a group of four and two, with the pair heading down the right corridor and the bigger group going upstairs. Dong-sik follows the pair, since it’ll be easier to try his experiment on them.

They wander slowly past the empty classrooms, bantering between themselves to prove they aren’t scared, but eventually they fall quiet the deeper in they wander. Perfect.

“Sang-won-ah,” Dong-sik says quietly as he walks between the two boys, waiting for a moment that neither of them are looking at each other. “You don’t really think there’s a ghost here, do you? It’s gotta be an urban legend.”

“I dunno,” Sang-won says, shining his flashlight into another empty classroom. “Hyo-jin and Kyung-ho both swear they saw something.”

“Maybe it was just a shadow,” Dong-sik whispers. “Or a reflection off the windows.”

“Yeah, but Kyung-ho swears it looked like this creepy dude-”

“Who are you talking to?” Hyun-soo asks, swiveling around.

Sang-won beams his flashlight toward his friend and shakily replies, “I was talking to you.”

“Uh, no you weren’t,” Hyun-soo says, starting to look very nervous.

“You were talking to me,” Dong-sik says as friendly as he can as he makes himself visible a few meters away. “Hey, kids.”

His friendliness doesn’t stop them from screaming and throwing an old school desk through him before they dash away.

“Bye, kids,” Dong-sik calls after them as a set of agonized howls sound from the other corridor. Uh oh. Hopefully In-woo didn’t get too creative with his improvisation. 

By the time Dong-sik makes it to the lobby, the quad upstairs must have heard the commotion, because they’re sneaking down the stairs in a clump, wildly swinging their flashlights and phones around to try and catch sight of anything. Dong-sik is planning to let them be, but In-woo comes strolling right over to them.

“Please don’t be too horrible,” Dong-sik chides and In-woo gives him another sweet, wide-eyed “who, me?” look before he leans in and says, “Better run along home now, children, if you don’t want to end up like me.” Two of them start crying before they even make it out of the building.

“We should probably stop coming here,” Dong-sik says, watching the kids all scramble into the sports field to reconvene. “I’m afraid they’ll really go and hire a shaman to exorcise the place if we continue.”

“They should stop poking their noses into danger. Did you learn anything?”

“Yeah, the boys could definitely understand what I was saying. What about you?”

“They knew I was person-shaped, but I don’t know if they recognized me,” In-woo reports as they head back to their escape room. 

“That should be enough if we’re desperate. Your brother should still recognize your voice.”

“Yes, but I would inspire a lot more fear if he could see my face as I threaten him.”

He isn’t wrong, but Dong-sik thinks they should quit before a priest rolls through and banishes them. Perhaps they could find a new haunting spot to test their results. It’s too bad there isn’t a simpler way of doing things.

As they pass the glass windows of another storefront, Dong-sik suddenly thinks of something. He grabs hold of In-woo by the back of his coat and pulls him to a stop, pointing at the clear glass.

“Do you think...we could see our reflections if it were working?”

In-woo stares at him a moment, then turns to look at the window, and then back to Dong-sik. “Escape room bathroom. Now.”

They fly back at double speed, and in their haste to test out this theory they collide with one another as they barge into the bathroom, and Dong-sik almost flies through the sink.

“Do it, do it,” he says as he rights himself. In-woo plants his hands on the sink counter and stares intently into the mirror. Slowly, his reflection begins to shimmer into existence.

“I can see you! You’re kind of blurry, but you’re there!”

“Can you tell it’s me?” In-woo asks, examining his own attractive face critically. “I don’t think I’ve focused the energy well enough yet. This isn’t good enough.”

“Well, at least now we’ll be able to tell when we make progress,” Dong-sik says cheerfully as he tries it out himself. His reflection is slightly clearer than In-woo’s, but it still looks very translucent and distorted as if it’s being viewed through a curtain of water. “Do a pose,” he instructs as he leans his head against In-woo’s shoulder and throws up a peace sign like they’re taking a selca. In the mirror, he can tell In-woo’s face is doing something, but they’re still too fuzzy for the disgust to translate properly.

“You are ridiculous,” In-woo complains, but he reaches out and gives a thumbs-down, which is probably the best Dong-sik will get out of him, so he gladly takes it.

\--

It takes another several weeks, but once they have visibility and speech solidly in the bag, they observe Ji-hoon for about a week to see the state he’s in, and it’s rather dire. He hasn’t returned to his lowly ways, but neither does he seem at all prepared to be chairman. In-woo spends a lot of their observation making disgusted noises and looking like he wants to drive a pen into someone’s throat. At one point he throws his hands up and floats out of a board meeting. Dong-sik suspects that no matter what he claimed to the contrary, he still cares about the company, having wasted so many years of his life on it.

“We definitely need to help him,” Dong-sik says as they lean against the rails of the roof like the first time they met. That all feels so long ago. 

“He’s exactly the fucking disaster I knew he would be.” 

Dong-sik scratches his hair in confusion. “To be honest, I still don’t understand what your father was thinking. How did he look at the two of you and think Ji-hoon would be the better choice? I mean, you have that whole serial killer situation, which is obviously very bad, but oddly not very detrimental to your ability to run a company?”

In-woo’s laugh is humorless. “Thank you for voting in my favor. In the end, he was a sentimental old fool, despite everything. I should have known, but we’re past the point of regrets.”

“Okay, so we’re going to do this?” When In-woo nods, Dong-sik grabs him by the wrist. “Don’t forget my half of the bargain. You’re going to let me enact my better person plan. You shape your brother into a proper chairman while I teach some kindness.”

“Yes, fine, you may do as you wish, as long as I get what I want.”

“Sounds good. Let’s do it,” he says and they shake hands, sealing the deal.

  


They approach Ji-hoon some hours after midnight after a hard work day. He looks to have been drinking while lying listlessly on his couch and scrolling through his phone. 

“Don’t attack him,” Dong-sik says when he notices In-woo looking squirrelly. 

“I wouldn’t do something so petty,” In-woo says, stalking Ji-hoon into the kitchen when he gets up to put his empty bottle away.

“You held him at gunpoint before, which goes beyond petty, if you ask me.”

In-woo ignores him in favor of watching Ji-hoon poke around in his fridge looking for more alcohol even though he looks more than a little buzzed.

“At least you’re currently drug-free,” In-woo says as he makes himself visible, his face creasing with disdain. Ji-hoon freezes in place before turning his head at a glacial pace until he sees In-woo leaning against his kitchen counter.

“H-hyung?” Ji-hoon stutters out, flinging his empty bottle into a cabinet. It shatters upon impact, and Dong-sik sighs.

“I told you not to scare him from the get go!” he says as he comes into view as well.

“Excuse me, this is a family matter,” In-woo says snidely, making a shooing motion at Dong-sik. “Go clean up the mess or something.”

“Yes, right away, _Director_ ,” Dong-sik says, making a face at him as he floats toward the glass. Ji-hoon’s eyes bug out as he watches Dong-sik move.

“Yook Dong-sikkie? Is that you?”

“Hi,” Dong-sik says awkwardly, as he tosses the glass shards into the garbage. “You look, um. Not well, but- okay-ish? How are you?” he asks pointlessly. He knows exactly how Ji-hoon is.

“Since when were you two so chummy?” In-woo demands, looking between the two of them suspiciously. 

“Since you locked us together in your secret murder cave and tried to make me stab him to death, maybe?” Dong-sik snipes back.

“Oh, get off your high horse. You almost let him hang himself and you _liked_ it.”

“Unfortunate for you that I didn’t succeed, isn’t it?”

“Wait wait wait,” Ji-hoon says, stumbling back to the couch and dropping down heavily as they bicker. “I’m losing my mind. I drank too much and now I’m hallucinating. Oh god. I’m too sober for this. No, maybe I’m too drunk?”

“I think you’re drunk enough,” Dong-sik says, floating over, “but you’re also not seeing things. We’re really here. As ghosts, if that wasn’t clear.”

“A-are ghosts real?”

“Apparently! Here, look.” Dong-sik takes his hand and swipes it through Ji-hoon’s face as he flinches away.

“Shit, okay, you’re really a ghost,” Ji-hoon says numbly as he collapses against the back of the couch.

Dong-sik puts a little energy in so he can pat him on the arm. “Yep.”

“Oh, now you’re touchinghim, too. Fantastic,” In-woo mutters, like some kind of jealous boyfriend.

Dong-sik rolls his eyes. Being a serial killer’s favorite plaything is such a commitment. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I needed your permission to interact with other people.”

“With other people, no. With him? Of course you do.”

Even after death the sibling rivalry rages on. If only In-woo would realize that not everything in his life has to be an inheritance battle. He was only ever second best in the eyes of one person. 

“First of all, I don’t actually belong to you, In-woo-ssi. Second of all, Ji-hoon-ssi and I barely even have a relationship, so stop being so territorial.”

Ji-hoon throws his hand up in a “stop” gesture. “Wait. Forget about me and him. Why are _you two_ even together? Didn’t you, like, kill each other?” He gestures between them with his finger, looking scared but mostly drained by their company.

“His presence is my punishment for my earthly crimes,” In-woo deadpans at the same time Dong-sik says, “I’m his keeper.”

Ji-hoon glances at them tiredly, and shrugs in weary acceptance. He’s taking this haunting business rather well. “Okay. Sure, why not. We’ll just pretend that weird-ass conversation about marking your territory didn’t just happen. And why are you here?”

“Because you’re overdue for a performance review.” In-woo seats himself in the armchair opposite Ji-hoon like he’s settling onto a throne, and Dong-sik has to wonder how bitter he feels about losing everything he worked for to his less capable brother, in the end. In-woo had actually been a pretty good boss to all the employees he wasn’t trying to frame for murder.

Ji-hoon sighs and gets up to grab himself another drink from his fridge. “Look, if you’re just gonna lecture me about the shitty job I’m going, I already know, okay?”

“That isn’t the only reason we came. Everyone in this room-”

“Everyone in the company,” Dong-sik mutters, and In-woo flashes the quickest of grins before his expression grows apathetic again.

“-is aware that you aren’t qualified to be running Daehan. Luckily for you, you know somebody who is.”

“...you? Are you coming back to work for the company?” Ji-hoon asks, looking caught between feeling hopeful and disgruntled.

“...I’m extremely deceased, so no.”

“Fuck you, I’m drunk and you know what I meant,” Ji-hoon says, scowling, and Dong-sik nods.

“In-woo-ssi, can you skip the theatrics and just tell him why we’re here?”

In-woo looks like a child who got his toy taken away but says, “Fine. We’re here to make you an offer. You’re in over your head and you have no idea who you can trust to help you without taking advantage of you.”

“Yeah, that’s- that’s not far off. I have Ji-yoon-noona,” Ji-hoon admits, “but she hasn’t been actively involved in the company for a while.”

“She has a head for business but without the ambition to carry you through,” In-woo agrees. “She’s gotten too used to taking it easy. I, however, am considerably more suited to doing your job, and I don’t want you ruining everything our family has been building for decades, so I will graciously offer you my assistance.”

Dong-sik smiles a bit to himself as he listens in. In-woo does have some pride in his work left, even if he denies it.

“W-what do I have to do?” Ji-hoon asks, after taking a nervous sip of his beer.

“You have to listen to everything I tell you to do, until I deem you capable of carrying on alone.”

“And if I don’t listen?”

“I’ll kill you,” In-woo says simply, crossing his legs. “If I leave you to your own devices Daehan will go to the dogs anyway, so why delay the inevitable? If you can’t take my much needed advice, I’ll eliminate you and hope our sister and the board will find someone more capable.”

Ji-hoon gulps nervously, and Dong-sik extends a bit of energy to reach out and support the bottle in his shaky hand. He’s been practicing using his energy as another limb lately, and he thinks he’s seeing adequate results, though it’s harder than just pushing it around his body.

“Don’t look so miserable,” In-woo says with his “I’m here to help you” smile. “That’s only if you don’t comply with my orders.”

“That’s a promise,” Dong-sik says, before In-woo can doublespeak his way out of it. “No death or injury if you try your best to do a good job.”

“Yes,” In-woo confirms reluctantly. “That.”

Ji-hoon nods several times rapidly, like a bobblehead, and then drains the rest of his bottle. “So that’s it? I don’t have to do anything besides let you help me get my shit together?”

“That’s his part of the deal, yeah,” Dong-sik says, perching himself on the arm of In-woo’s chair. He gets pushed off two seconds later.

“What do you mean ‘his part?’” Ji-hoon asks slowly.

“Well, we haven’t talked about what you and I are doing yet!”

Ji-hoon turns his incredulous look on In-woo, who just shakes his head. 

“As much as I hate to admit it, I have no more control over him in death than I did while we were alive,” In-woo says, before kicking Dong-sik forward. “Get on with it.”

“Sheesh, alright,” Dong-sik says, sitting cross-legged on the coffee table instead. “Seo Ji-hoon-ssi, you’re going to be the first student of Yook Dong-sik’s ‘It’s Not a Bad Thing to Be Nice’ School. Good for you!” At Ji-hoon’s continued consternation, he leans in and whispers, “Don’t worry, I’m enrolling your brother too.”

“You’re doing _what?_ ” says In-woo, who Dong-sik left unaware until now because of the exact face he’s making at this moment.

“It’ll be good for both of you to learn how to act like nice, civilized people who can function in a society with ordinary folks. I know you,” he points at In-woo, “are good at pretending to obey laws, and you,” he points at Ji-hoon, “were not raised with enough consequences, so I’m here to teach you what us regular people think are appropriate ways to conduct ourselves. You know, simple things like ‘don’t kill people,’ or ‘don’t manipulate employees into doing your illegal dirty work’. Stuff you’ll both get the hang of soon enough.”

“Yook Dong-sik,” In-woo starts to threaten, and Dong-sik blinks guilelessly back at him.

“Do you disagree? Are you upset? Are you thinking about trying to strangle me to solve the problem? That’s exactly why you need this course, In-woo-ssi. Don’t forget we shook on it.”

“You devious little bastard,” In-woo says, probably cursing himself out now for not catching Dong-sik’s vague wording earlier. Still, he seems about half furious and half intrigued, much like he did that time Dong-sik drugged and kidnapped him in the bar bathroom. Dong-sik kind of likes how it looks on him.

Ji-hoon laughs, and then turns it into a cough so that In-woo’s wrath isn’t re-directed toward him. “Alright, fine,” he says. “I’ll agree to both conditions. Just don’t kill me or fuck up my life, okay? I’m trusting you do the right thing.”

“Perfect,” Dong-sik says, smiling at his new student. “C’mon, let’s go home,” he says as he passes In-woo on his way to the window. “Lessons start on Monday, so try and get a good night’s sleep. Don’t forget to hydrate before you go to bed,” he reminds Ji-hoon.

“Why are you being so nice to him?” In-woo asks, looking between them with open distaste. So possessive. What is Dong-sik supposed to do with him? Does he really think he’ll lose Dong-sik to Ji-hoon too?

“Okay, fine, let’s do lesson #1 right now. Even if you don’t like someone you can still be concerned for their well-being.” Ji-hoon shakes his head as In-woo continues looking like he cannot fathom this concept at all, which is when Dong-sik remembers that he really might not be able to. “If you can’t do that, you can still give them helpful advice. It’s basically what you’re going to start doing all the time, so try it now.”

In-woo looks aggrieved but turns to Ji-hoon and says, “Don’t drown in your own vomit.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“Okay, and with that we’re going to go. Sleep well, Ji-hoon-ssi.” Dong-sik pulls In-woo out of his brother’s apartment before he gets any funny ideas.

On their way back, Dong-sik can feel In-woo’s eyes on him, but he elects to pretend he doesn’t notice. If In-woo has something to say, he’ll have to come out with it himself. Besides, sometimes he just likes staring at Dong-sik for no good reason. Dong-sik has learned to accept it. And maybe even enjoy it a little.

“You tricked me,” In-woo finally says when they’re almost back, sounding like he might be reluctantly impressed.

“Not really. I just used your expectations against you, and you didn’t think to carefully review our oral contract before agreeing.”

“Perhaps I’ve still been underestimating you all this time.” When Dong-sik turns, he finds In-woo carefully examining him, his mouth curved with satisfaction, like he’s pleased by a job well done. It sharpens into something more predatory, edging on hungry. Dong-sik’s instincts recognize the expression as a threat, but his mind, which feels clearer and clearer these days, tells him to meet In-woo’s gaze calmly, because he’s no longer content with being seen as prey. He’s only willing to stand on equal footing from now on, but he gets the feeling In-woo doesn’t much mind at all.

“Now you know better.”

In-woo considers him for another lingering moment before returning his attention forward. “I think I do.”

\--

Dong-sik tags along for In-woo’s first lesson, even though he feels as overwhelmed with information as Ji-hoon probably is. They never make themselves visible unless it’s in Ji-hoon’s locked office, though In-woo shadows his brother everywhere except the bathroom, almost constantly asking for information on new faces or giving pointers on how to deal with known variables. He keeps his voice to a whisper, and only speaks when there’s nobody else around. At first, Ji-hoon reacts more openly to what he’s saying, until he sees his reflection in the elevator doors and realizes he looks a little bonkers. Luckily his office is soundproofed, so he and In-woo can yell at each other about shareholders and bad trades and internal audits all they want. Dong-sik usually cracks open a book or goes to check on his old friends at Asset Management Team 3 when they get into it.

Dong-sik decides after the first day that In-woo gets Ji-hoon for most of his working hours, and Dong-sik will work with him during his downtime. At first he thought he might be able to help both brothers at once, and then quickly realized that dealing with them simultaneously was like intentionally swallowing glass for fun, so he chose to work on In-woo after hours, while they’re out and about. Despite In-woo’s insistence on focusing on “ghost things”, Dong-sik finally convinced him to play cards, which devolved into In-woo teaching Dong-sik how to throw a playing card hard enough to slice something. And because they spend so much time in the escape room already, it’s become easier for Dong-sik to wheedle In-woo into doing other things with him, like going to the movies or haunting a bookstore or karaoke room at night.

After a couple of weeks, it does seem like Ji-hoon is starting to retain some of what In-woo is teaching him, and maybe a modicum of what Dong-sik is saying. As both students of the “It’s Not a Bad Thing to Be Nice” School are rather non-compliant, improvement is slow.

“Don’t look at your female employees like that,” Dong-sik says as he sees Ji-hoon ogling someone’s behind again on their way back from lunch. “Actually, don’t look at any employees like that. You’re the boss now; it’s time to stop being a creep.”

“Am I not allowed to appreciate someone’s natural beauty?” Ji-hoon asks defensively, and Dong-sik glares at him.

“Not unless you want to get slapped with a lawsuit. Or an actual slap. In-woo-ssi never looked at anyone like that, which is why he was more respected than you.”

“Yeah, he just looked at them like he wanted to rip their organs out,” Ji-hoon mutters, but he does keep his gaze up for the rest of his walk.

When they get back to Ji-hoon’s office, In-woo is lounging in his chair, flipping through a report.

“Get out of my chair or I’ll just sit on you,” Ji-hoon grouses.

“If you sit on me I’ll break your legs.”

“Stop threatening people with violence to get your way,” Dong-sik says, visibly floating over to kick In-woo in the shin. In-woo hops to his feet, dropping the report back on Ji-hoon’s desk.

“You can’t be anti-violence and then assault me!” he says, outraged by the hypocrisy.

“I’m just trying to speak your language. Really though, please stop being an asshole. That’s the #1 lesson I want you to take away from my class.”

Ji-hoon slides into his chair while they’re having their row. “Shouldn’t his #1 lesson be ‘thou shalt not kill’? That seems more important.”

“You’re right, Ji-hoon-ssi. The most important takeaway for both of you is ‘other people’s lives and feelings are just as important as yours.’ For you, that means stop being a sleazy jerk.” Ji-hoon pulls a face, and Dong-sik decides to give him some homework. “I’m giving you an assignment. For the next two weeks, I want you to pay attention to how people react when you approach them. Think about whether they actually respect you, and if they don’t, try to understand why.”

“If you can figure that much out, maybe you’re not as hopeless as I assumed,” In-woo says.

“And you,” Dong-sik says, whirling on him, “your homework is to do one good deed a day.” In-woo has been listening to Dong-sik’s words but probably letting them flow right through him like drainwater. They’re never going to get anywhere at this rate.

“What if I choose not to?” In-woo asks imperiously, using his height to step forward and loom over Dong-sik.

Dong-sik frowns, and meets him halfway, refusing to be the one intimidated here. It’s difficult to be scared of In-woo now that Dong-sik has seen him lose at an arcade rhythm game eight times in a row. Seo In-woo hasn’t been a threat to him in ages.

“Don’t forget we made a deal. If you break our contract, I’m going to hold you liable, and you won’t be able to kill your way out of this one.” He grabs hold of In-woo’s lapel in imitation of their encounter in the elevator and leans in to murmur, “Ji-hoon-ssi hasn’t been the only one listening when you talk. I’m armed with Daehan’s secrets, an incorporeal body, and just enough moral flexibility to commit crimes for the greater good. So decide for yourself if your stubbornness is worth seeing your company go up in flames.”

“You wouldn’t,” In-woo denies, those magnetic eyes fixed upon Dong-sik’s, burning him from the inside out again. They’re close enough to breathe one another in if either of them still had need for oxygen. “There would be too much collateral damage.”

“Don’t test me and we won’t have to find out,” Dong-sik says, patting him on the chest. The usual sensation of contact is amplified into a static sticky heat with both of them coursing energy through their forms to remain visible, and it makes Dong-sik jump a bit. From the slight twitch in In-woo’s shoulders, he felt it too.

“Alright, I listened to enough bullshit from you both for long enough today,” Ji-hoon says as he clicks around on his computer. “I don’t care what you guys decide to do, but take your weird sexual ghost tension somewhere else.” He flicks his wrist dismissively at the two of them, and it dispels the electric air around them.

Dong-sik flushes as he scuttles out of In-woo’s orbit, blurting out, “Anyway, be good and do your homework; I’m going to go see my team, goodbye.” As he phases down through the floor, he can feel the weight of In-woo’s gaze following him out.

  


Ji-hoon’s assignment is something for him to do on his own, but Dong-sik doesn’t actually trust In-woo to follow his instructions of his own accord. Luckily, they spend 90% of their time together, which gives Dong-sik plenty of chances to point out all the little nice things In-woo could be doing during stress relief from their day job of helping Ji-hoon. When they’re in public, the kindness opportunities are many and various.

(“Look, you could recycle that carton!”

“I bet the owner would be happy if you chased that lost cat back home.”

“Oh, that boy just lost his balloon, but if you pushed it into the tree branches…”)

Dong-sik is pretty sure In-woo starts giving in to his suggestions just to get him to shut up.

“Once again, your nonstop chatter ruins everything else I like about you,” In-woo says as he uses his powers on an abandoned street to clean up some overflowing garbage after their excursion to Gyeongbokgung Palace.

“If you do another nice thing, I’ll stop talking for a whole hour,” Dong-sik says as he plays with a rather fearless black cat. It rubs its head affectionately against Dong-sik’s intangible leg, but when he tries to put some energy into actually petting it, it violently batters his hand away. Cute. It kind of reminds him of a certain someone.

“Two hours,” In-woo counter-offers, and Dong-sik says, “Hour and a half.”

“Fine.” He stalks over to a house and hangs up the laundry that fell over in the wind earlier. 

“Good job!” Dong-sik says as his cat runs off. “Do you feel like-”

“No, no more words,” In-woo says as he reaches over and places his hand over Dong-sik’s mouth. Dong-sik resists the intrusive urge to lick him again. “You promised me ninety blessed minutes of silence.” Dong-sik makes a face at him when he removes his hand, but adheres to his promise and doesn’t talk again until after 9:18. He does, however, throw his arm around In-woo’s shoulder and link their arms together and poke him in the side until In-woo’s tolerance meter breaks and he flings Dong-sik into oncoming traffic.

In-woo’s good deeds generally have to be actions taken when no humans can see, but recently, with their increased ability to use their spiritual energy as an extension of their bodies, it’s become easier to pull off feats that could be attributed to the wind or an unusual turn of luck. It becomes something of a hobby to goad In-woo into competing with him to see who can help someone catch their flown away hat, or who can trip up a pickpocket, or knock a heavy box onto a creep snapping upskirt pictures. In-woo acts like it’s all rather pointless, but Dong-sik thinks he might actually enjoy figuring out how to manipulate the things around them to make all their little actions seem like natural coincidences. Also, sometimes he gets to hurt people, which is an obvious upside for him.

Meanwhile, Ji-hoon has finally realized that if he stops trying to publicly humiliate employees they’ll find him much more tolerable. Even better, if he treats them like people instead of replaceable parts, they might even start to like him. It’s going to take some work for him to mend all the bridges he tried to burn, but even with the occasional setback, Dong-sik thinks his image is improving bit by bit. He doesn’t know how all the rest of it is going, but recently In-woo has only complained about wanting to throw his brother out a window about once every two or three days, so Dong-sik is pretty sure they’re doing okay.

Okay enough that he feels comfortable leaving the two of them to their own devices so he can check on the people he cares about. Dong-chan is doing fine in school, and doesn’t seem to have bully problems anymore. In fact, he seems to be surrounded by more friends than before. Chil-sung is fitting in well at the Meat Republic, and has struck up a kind of odd friendship with Dong-sik’s parents. Dong-sik actually gets to witness Ji-yeon’s son crawling around one day, which is adorable and comforting, in some inexplicable circle-of-life way.

Asset Management Team 3 seems a bit more chipper as each week passes. Dong-sik’s desk remains empty, probably because Daehan’s PR took quite a hit, and they haven’t been able to hire anyone to fill his spot yet. He watches as the little quintet heads out for drinks together, glad to know they’re all staying afloat.

One day, while his students are busy with chairman business, Dong-sik decides to check in on Bo-kyung. He flies over to her station around lunchtime to see what they’re up to, and finds them in the middle of a fried chicken party. 

“It took you long enough to accept, sunbae!” Taek-soo is saying as food is being passed around.

“You should’ve gone there months ago!” her boss blusters while giving her an extra large drumstick. “Our Officer Shim is gonna show those guys at central how it’s done!”

“I still have to go through training,” Bo-kyung says modestly.

Taek-soo scoffs. “Ah, sure, but you’ve been profiling for years! You’ll blow them out of the water.” The other officers cheer in agreement as they clink their coffee cups together. Dong-sik sits on the couch beside Taek-soo and just enjoys their company and chit-chat for a little while. Bo-kyung looks like she’s almost back to her old self, and Dong-sik smiles as she huffs at Taek-soo for bringing up her chin-rubbing habit again.

“You’ll do a wonderful job, Bo-kyung-ssi,” he says so that only he can hear, but hoping the message reaches her nonetheless. “Thanks for being my partner in crime.”

For a second, she looks up and smiles in his direction, almost as if she can sense him there, and he grins back. Letting her hit him with his car was one of the best things to ever happen to him, in retrospect. He wishes he could tell her as much, but knowing she’ll be out there helping others is a reassurance in itself. He knows that there’ll soon be people out there as grateful to Shim Bo-kyung as he is.

\--

“Do you ever wonder why we haven’t met any of your victims?” Dong-sik asks one day as they pass a haunted bus on their way to go check on Ji-hoon. Almost every passenger aboard was deceased, and they all looked at Dong-sik and In-woo as they floated past. They haven’t spoken to many other spirits, but of the ones they’ve met, many find it kind of amusing if unsurprising that they stuck together. It’s been long enough that Dong-sik has begun to feel the same way.

In-woo considers this for a moment. “No, not really. Seoul is a large city, so if they’re still around there’s no guarantee we would cross paths. Besides, if they were sticking around because of a grudge, I imagine my painful death via idiot and pavement was probably satisfying enough to send them along to the next life.”

“Hey, don’t give all the credit to the idiot,” Dong-sik says, nudging In-woo with his elbow. “Your hubris played a big role too.”

This garners him a snort of disbelief. “Was it hubris that did me in?”

“Well, that or tenderheartedness. You could’ve easily killed Bo-kyung-ssi long before I reached the two of you, and you could’ve easily killed me even earlier than that if you weren’t so interested in playing games. And yet you didn’t. So I suppose it’s whichever option offends you less.”

“Then I pick hubris,” In-woo says dryly, and Dong-sik laughs. 

“I thought you might.”

“I’m more surprised by the number of Joseon-era spirits we’ve seen.”

“There is a shocking number of them, isn’t there?” Dong-sik agrees, thinking about the stately ghosts they’ve noticed floating by in their old-fashioned hanbok in the last few months. “Maybe they’ve given up on moving on?”

In-woo grunts. “Quitters.”

“Hm, I don’t know about that. I mean, I’m still around but I don’t feel very vengeful or sad. Maybe some of us just don’t feel the need to give up on our old lives.”

“You don’t have a grudge?” In-woo asks, sounding surprised.

“No? Why, do you? Wait- no, please pretend I didn’t ask,” Dong-sik says, holding his hand up. In-woo smiles at his foolishness but then chews on his thumb for a few seconds as he thinks.

“I assumed I was the source of your resentment,” he eventually says, and Dong-sik blinks back at him.

“Didn’t you just say that your death probably sent all your victims onto the next life?”

“Yes, but you and I have a little more history than that.”

He looks...not embarrassed, exactly, but wary, as if he’s concerned that Dong-sik will suddenly realize that their relationship is deeply peculiar. As if Dong-sik wasn’t aware of who exactly he tied himself to for eternity when they went out that window together. As if he could really leave In-woo now, after half a year of spending all their time with no one but each other. As if either of them has anybody else in this world that’s no longer theirs.

Dong-sik doesn’t know if it’s because his perspective on forgiveness and morality has changed since dying, or if he’s Lima Syndrome’d himself into caring this much about In-woo, but it’s too late to turn back now. He still knows very well the person In-woo was, but he also knows better than anyone the person In-woo might have been in a different life, and he can’t let go of that knowledge now. Not when Dong-sik finally feels like they’re getting somewhere. They’re stuck together, for better or worse. ‘Til whatever comes after death does them part.

“That’s true, but- I wouldn’t call it a grudge exactly. I’m not resentful- well, maybe a tiny bit- but anyway, I feel less bitter than I do...responsible?”

“Responsible for what? Me?” In-woo says dubiously. “Didn’t you say you would stop following me once I gave up revenge?”

“W-well, yes, but at this point I can’t leave until you graduate from kindness school, and who knows how long that will take,” Dong-sik says quickly, before he can start to argue. It wouldn’t do to let In-woo get any ideas about trying to get rid of him now. It would ruin all their progress.

“Who knows, indeed.”

“Besides, I’m your keeper, remember?”

In-woo looks fond when he says, “I don’t think I could possibly forget.” The sight makes Dong-sik’s face turn warm. He should be used to In-woo’s inexplicable attachment to him by now, but recently it makes him feel self-conscious. As if it’ll unravel if he examines it too closely.

“Anyway! I assume if we felt ready to move on we just _would_. But until then we’re here. Maybe when we’re done improving Ji-hoon-ssi?” They’ve been working at it for over three months now, and Ji-hoon is much better than he was, but the work is far from done. In-woo’s progress is slower, with his good deeds being somewhat reluctant and rarely unprompted. However, he also hasn’t tried to kill anyone since that time they tumbled around in Bo-kyung’s house, so Dong-sik will consider it a win.

“Not likely. There’s no way _he’s_ the reason I’m still here.”

Considering how much of In-woo’s life was focused around one-upping his brother, Dong-sik doesn’t think it unreasonable that the resentment would keep him tethered here. Perhaps it’s unresolved anger at the father who still never properly acknowledged him before passing on, though that one’s kind of on In-woo for killing the guy. Or maybe it’s because of someone else altogether.

“Would you want to see her?” Dong-sik asks abruptly, because he’s been wondering the same thing about himself recently. Would she be proud of who he became? Would she be disappointed by his stupid choices, or glad that he did his best to stay true to himself until the end? Would things have been different if she had still been around?

“No,” In-woo answers almost immediately.

He doesn’t need Dong-sik to clarify. They both know who he’s referring to.

“Really? Not even for just a minute?”

In-woo halts but doesn’t turn toward Dong-sik. For a few seconds he just silently watches the pedestrians crossing the street, before he says, in a tone Dong-sik has never heard him use before, “No. Not if it means she spent thirty years hanging on after her death just to watch her family fall apart. Not if it means seeing me like this.”

Dong-sik isn’t certain what it is that In-woo wants to keep from his mother, but it isn’t his place to ask. He wishes he could have met her. Somehow he has the feeling they might have gotten along.

“She must be out there enjoying her next life,” Dong-sik says as he pats In-woo on the back, trying to sound confident. From the corner of his eye, he can see In-woo’s expression softening ever so slightly.

“Good. She deserves it.”

\--

Recently, Dong-sik has been thinking about what it would take to haunt a dream, as their ghost teacher mentioned. He thinks if he tried to insert his entire self inside a living creature he would probably possess it. On the flip side, if he inserts himself just into their brain, perhaps he could see the subconscious? The spiritual world is still filled with many mysteries.

He also doesn’t know what happens if he tries putting just a little bit of his spiritual energy inside another being. Would it enhance their spiritual vision? Give them some kind of ghost power? In-woo is not very alive, so he makes for a bad test subject, but he’s the best Dong-sik has most of the time, so one Sunday morning, while they’re sitting at the back of a movie theater, waiting for the matinee to start, he extends a little tendril of energy toward In-woo’s arm and pushes it against his form. There’s some resistance, and In-woo glances down in bewilderment.

“What are you doing?” In-woo demands, glaring down at the spot on his arm where he sees the distortion in the air that signifies Dong-sik’s energy. He reaches over and pinches the tendril until it snaps free, retreating back into Dong-sik’s hand. It feels almost like being pinched himself.

“That kind of hurt.”

“That’s the least I should do, considering you just tried to stick part of yourself inside me without my consent,” In-woo says, raising his eyebrows.

Dong-sik blanches. “That does sound really terrible. I’m sorry.”

“What are you even trying to do?”

“I want to figure out how to enter the subconscious. And maybe possession, though I don’t really intend to use it.”

“Possession?” Now In-woo looks much too interested, and Dong-sik shakes his head.

“People would notice right away if you possessed your brother. He’s still a little too immature.”

“Pity.”

“Besides, he would never agree to it. Consent is important.”

“Oh, now you think so?”

Dong-sik ducks his head apologetically. That truly was very awful of him. “I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Just ask the next time you want to be so intimately connected,” In-woo says wryly, before returning his attention to the trailers and ignoring all of Dong-sik’s attempts to ask him what he means by that.

After that failure Dong-sik decides to try his dream experiment on some animals first, to see what results he gets. There’s a friendly dog that lives near the escape room that never barks at them when they pass by, so Dong-sik pays her a visit one morning and plays around with her for a bit until she tires enough for a nap. Once she’s asleep, he puts a bit of energy into her head, and feels himself getting kind of sleepy, so he pushes himself further until a sense of dizziness forces his eyes closed. 

When he opens them he’s standing in what looks like an endless field with his canine friend surrounded by all different kinds of balls. He throws one and it turns into a mail truck, but she chases it down regardless. In here, he feels even less real than normal, but it’s not disagreeable. He passes some time just throwing balls for the dog to chase. They all transform into things like slippers and a cartoon character that Dong-sik doesn’t recognize. 

It takes him a moment to figure out how to extricate himself, but when he closes his eyes and pulls all his energy back outwards, he finds himself back in reality beside his sleeping friend. Neat. After giving the dog one last pat on the head, he zooms back to find In-woo and tell him about his progress.

“Guess what I just did?” he says, bouncing in place with excitement on top of Ji-hoon’s office table. In-woo looks briefly up at him from his seat on the couch before returning his attention to his newspaper.

“You successfully entered someone’s dream.”

“Yeah! I- wait, how did you know?”

“I do pay attention when you talk,” In-woo says as he turns to the arts section. “I’ve told you this many times: I know more about you than you think.”

“Really? I’ll quiz you then.” Dong-sik wiggles into the seat next to In-woo and peeks at his paper before losing interest. “Alright, what’s my favorite color?”

“Blue.”

That one’s too easy. “The sport I played in middle school?”

“Basketball, though I can’t imagine you were any good at it.”

“Hey, I was...adequate. My favorite cut of meat?”

“Ribeye, obviously.”

“My dad’s favorite tv show?”

“That political drama where the main character was a clone all along. He likes the actress who plays the councilwoman.”

“Um, Dong-chan’s best friend?”

“The boy with the square glasses and the stupid bowlcut. Terrible hairstyle,” In-woo mutters as he turns another page.

“My favorite side dish? What club did I get kicked out of in college? Have I ever broken my leg? When was the last time I left the country? Do I have any allergies? What was the name of my third girlfriend?” Dong-sik asks in rapid succession. He’s bound to trip In-woo up eventually.

“Potato salad, the volunteer wind ensemble because you don’t actually play an instrument — and how you wound up signing up in the first place, I still do not understand — yes, you broke your leg when you were 15, but not while playing basketball, surprisingly. You took a plane to Taiwan with your family in 2016. You’re mildly allergic to pollen.” In-woo pauses their quick-fire cross-examination to smirk at Dong-sik. “You’ve only had two girlfriends in your life; one in high school, and another for several months after college. Nice try, though.”

“How do you know all that?” Dong-sik asks, genuinely impressed and maybe slightly frightened. No one else in Dong-sik’s life has ever paid him this much attention and he doesn’t know what the appropriate emotional reaction is. It’s kind of exhilarating. 

“Did you think I was lying when I said you talk too much? If we were still alive I could have stolen your identity nine times over.” In-woo responds, folding his newspaper down to give him an intentionally blasé look. It doesn’t fool Dong-sik for a second. It’s a rarity when In-woo isn’t watching him with intention, whether harmless or heated.

“I don’t see why you would, but okay. You’re a really good listener, In-woo-ssi. It’s kind of nice to feel known.” He smiles at the thought of In-woo rolling his eyes as Dong-sik rambles on about something but memorizing it anyway. In-woo just lets out a huff of air and continues reading about musicals, but his cheeks have the slightest tinge of pink.

“You two look cozy,” Ji-hoon says as he lets himself into the room. He’s been attending some of his lesser meetings alone as of late, and nothing’s exploded yet. “I thought you had phantom stuff to do, Yook Dong-sikkie.”

“I came to give In-woo-ssi an update and check on my favorite student while I was here. Did you try acknowledging individual people for their good work?”

“ _He’s_ your favorite?” In-woo spits at the same time that Ji-hoon answers, “Yeah, and I guess I see how it helps. That one guy in Accounting looked like he was gonna cry. But like in a good way.”

“It’s nice to know people recognize your work,” Dong-sik says, cheerfully ignoring the venomous look In-woo is sending his brother. “Good job, Ji-hoon-ssi.”

“Thanks?” Ji-hoon says, but he does look a little proud of himself, until his phone rings, and then he looks weary again. “Hello? Yeah, at 2 p.m. He’s here now? What do you mean- alright, just hold him and I’ll make it work. Yeah, tell Da-hee to get that together for me. Bye.” He hangs up and starts looking around his desk for something.

“AK Electronics?” In-woo asks.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t bother looking; Kim Min-woo should have everything you need.”

“Right, okay,” Ji-hoon says, taking a breath and using the reflection from his phone to fix his hair. “I’m gonna head down there. Thanks, hyung.” He’s out the door again in a second.

“Aw, he said thank you,” Dong-sik says. He decides to keep to himself how happy he is that they’re being civil to one another.

“Are you impressed?”

“Actually, yes. I wasn’t sure that word was part of the Seo family vocabulary. You’re not going to join him?”

In-woo’s eyes flicker over to the clock. “I’ll give him fifteen minutes on his own first. Did you leave a book here?”

“It’s in his bookcase somewhere.”

Dong-sik goes and recovers one of the thrillers he surreptitiously flew here under the cover of darkness one night. Upon seeing them, Ji-hoon told him he was stupid, and that he could just order him some more off the internet. Dong-sik thanked him for the kind offer, and watched as the compliment fried his brain.

“I was kidding, by the way,” Dong-sik says after settling back into his seat. “He isn’t my favorite.”

In-woo turns another page without looking up, but he can’t help the smugness in his voice when he replies, “I’d be concerned about your mental state if he were.” Dong-sik shouldn’t find his self-satisfied tone as endearing as he does.

“So Director Seo cares about me after all,” Dong-sik teases, pressing his knee against In-woo’s. As usual, that little frisson of electricity sparks through both of them when their spiritual energies touch.

In-woo neither denies the accusation nor moves his leg away, and that’s an answer in itself.

  


That evening, they decide to go see the summer fireworks show, because with the end of today’s book Dong-sik has finished his backlog of horror novels. On their way to the bus stop, they pass an old building that’s been suffering from external damage in the hot and rainy weather. Since dying, they’ve both become more attuned to the potential movement of nonliving things, maybe because it resonates with the energy inside them. Tonight, one of the air conditioning units barely being held in place finally slips out of its window right as a young businesswoman is passing underneath.

Dong-sik’s awareness is slightly too slow for him to react, but In-woo extends his hand and shoots forth a strand of energy that shoves the poor woman to the ground just far enough to avoid the air conditioner that comes crashing to the pavement. Several passersby immediately run over to check on her, all clamoring about how lucky it was she didn’t get hit.

Dong-sik, meanwhile, is still processing the sight.

“You saved her,” he says slowly, still unsure if his eyes are deceiving him. “You went out of your way to help that woman!”

A truly good deed done independently without any selfish intentions, ulterior motives, or expectations of reciprocation. Something just genuinely _nice_ (though, in typical In-woo style, he did manage to give her some minor scrapes in doing so). 

“It would have caused a scene if she died,” In-woo says, already floating on with disinterest. “I hate unnecessary gatherings. Too many stupid people grouped together in one place.”

“Sure, that’s true, but you-” Dong-sik falls silent because he knows that In-woo is probably going to keep denying that there’s any goodwill in his body. “I’m proud of you,” is all he says in the end as he presses In-woo’s face between his hands. It barely begins to cover the swirl of emotions inside him. Pride, relief, euphoria. Vindication.

_I knew you could do it, you exquisite bastard. I knew we could make you into someone better, even if you’re still the same perfectly crafty and controlling man underneath it all. I knew that I saw something in you that no one else ever has._

“Don’t be,” In-woo replies, his lovely face looking appalled. He lets Dong-sik drink in the glorious sight of him for a moment more before reaching up to remove Dong-sik’s hands to plaster them against Dong-sik’s own face.

“Alright,” Dong-sik agrees, though he’s sure his pride is still spilling out from beneath his fingers. He could hardly have imagined this outcome when he imposed his kindness campaign on In-woo those months ago.

“Hurry up. The bus is leaving soon.”

As In-woo herds him onto the bus, Dong-sik can’t help opening the floodgates. He’s just so moved. “Can you believe that three months ago you’d never even taken a bus? How things have changed. Now you’ve been on the bus, you’ve become capable of having a day’s worth of conversation with Ji-hoon without maiming him, you’ve learned how to do nice things for other people just because you can-”

“Dong-sik-ssi, kindly shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

“You’re welcome to try, Director.”

\--

Dong-sik wishes he still kept a fake diary so he could write about that momentous occasion, but as it is, he’ll never forget it. But the unbelievable thing is that it isn’t the only occurrence. Dong-sik was half-afraid that by pointing it out, In-woo would never do anything so high caliber again, but he’s happily proven wrong. 

People in Seoul are awfully prone to vehicular accidents, especially when drunk. They see an astounding number of uncoordinated people stumbling toward busy streets each night, and In-woo takes great joy in roughly knocking these people back onto the sidewalk before they wind up flattened like roadkill. 

“You could be a little more gentle,” Dong-sik says as In-woo kicks a man in the ankle, causing his legs to buckle. The poor guy flops back onto his bottom in inebriated confusion before he can get mowed down by the truck that speeds by a second later.

“They don’t deserve gentleness,” In-woo replies as they watch the man hobble to his feet to flag down a taxi. “They’re lucky I’ve decided to let them live at all.”

Dong-sik sighs but just pulls him along without further comment. It’s unsurprisingly unsettling how much In-woo likes playing god, but at least he’s become a benevolent if mean-spirited one. It must be an offshoot of his natural desire to control other people, but since it all goes toward a net positive, Dong-sik won’t complain.

Hilariously, In-woo seems to grow a little more exasperated with each rescue, as if he’s disgusted by the inability of people to keep themselves alive. Instead of being driven to stamp them out, he’s become aggravated into helping more and more, perhaps because he’s noticed just how many helpless, stupid humans are out there who can’t get by without him. Dong-sik knows he doesn’t care about their wellbeing so much as losing what he sees as pawn pieces against his opponent, which is the world. Life and death are a game, and In-woo intends to win.

“Why the hell did he just stand there?” he rants at Dong-sik another day after they stop a small boy from getting crushed by a giant tree branch that broke in last night’s thunderstorm. They’re still watching as the mother carefully checks her crying son for injuries. There’s an unreadable expression on In-woo’s face even though his voice is quite obviously annoyed.

“Well, he’s only seven years old and probably doesn’t have very good reflexes yet.”

“I was learning how to use a hunting knife at seven.”

“In-woo-ssi, I know you’re aware that your childhood was deeply eccentric,” Dong-sik says as he leans his head on In-woo’s shoulder. “Be proud of yourself. You gave him a little more time to spend with his mom,” he says, smiling brightly. In-woo gives him an impassive look before reaching over to squish his face with a crab-claw hand.

They’ve even prevented a murder or two, because the sloppy execution incensed In-woo so much that he felt obligated to put a stop to them. 

Tonight they hear a domestic disturbance on their way back from an amusement park (because Dong-sik thought it would be fun to ride a roller coaster even though they can fly and In-woo wanted to give people some real scares in the haunted house) and find an angry man stumbling around his apartment trying to hit his girlfriend with a wrench and screaming about her looking down on him. She evades him while trying to dial the police, but the space is small and she has no path of escape.

Without discussing it, Dong-sik shorts the lights while In-woo uses his powers to tip the man into the wall and then drops the wrench on his neck for good measure.

“Careless,” he comments as the woman scrambles out of the apartment, already talking to the police. “He should’ve incapacitated her first. Oh, he’s up.” But their would-be murderer accidentally knocks himself down by tripping over his own shoes and falling to the ground again. “That was well-deserved. Who leaves their shoes all over the entryway like that? Barbaric.”

“Nice work, good citizen,” Dong-sik says as In-woo crouches down to examine their groaning victim. He’s got a peculiar expression on his face, and Dong-sik belatedly realizes that it’s one he hasn’t seen in a while.

“Don’t,” he warns. He can’t have In-woo relapsing now. Not after so much progress.

“Why not?” In-woo asks, glancing up at him with that hypnotic stare. “He’s trash, plain and simple. Beyond being poor, beyond being pitiful, he’s the kind of scum who can’t recognize his own failures and blames others for his own weaknesses. Why let him live? Why shouldn’t I crush him? If we’re going to keep saving the helpless masses, why take our chances by letting filth inhabit the same world?” His hand trails down to brush against the man’s throat, causing the guy to shiver in confusion.

Dong-sik knows that trying to appeal to In-woo’s misaligned moral code won’t work. He really isn’t certain that any of his attempts to make In-woo a better person have stuck, besides the lessons that have pragmatic results or provide him some manner of entertainment. In-woo isn’t often inclined to undertake actions that don’t benefit him in some way, and Dong-sik may be a little oblivious, but he’s aware that In-woo’s complicated attachment to him is enough to convince him to do things he normally wouldn’t.

However, he isn’t sure that connection is enough in this case. He’ll need another reason.

“What if he comes back as one of us?” he asks, crouching down to meet In-woo’s eyes.

“What?”

“You can’t guarantee you’ll send him on to his next life. You want to purge the world of trash, but we don’t have the ability to change the spiritual world. If we kill him, he’s much more likely to come back with a grudge, and then we’ll be stuck with him indefinitely,” Dong-sik reasons, reaching down to wrap his fingers around the hand caressing the man’s neck. “We haven’t met any of your victims yet, but I don’t want to take that chance with scum like him. Do you?”

For several seconds, they stare at one another, unblinking, before Dong-sik stands slowly, drawing In-woo to his feet as well.

“Let’s go,” he says, tugging In-woo through the open door and into the night.

They don’t stop until they’re standing on an overpass, staring down at the rushing cars below.

“Want to throw me down there?” Dong-sik asks. The tail lights blur into neon streaks and all the objects around them feel distinctly weighted, like they’ve become untethered from the rest of the world. In-woo doesn’t say anything for a long moment as he looks up at the sliver of moon hanging above them, and then back down at Dong-sik’s waiting face.

“No, not tonight,” he says, bringing his hand up to cup Dong-sik’s cheek the same way he did at the beach, but there’s no falseness in his tone or his demeanor this time. There’s only the two of them, alone together above the city, and that obsidian glow in In-woo’s eyes that burns Dong-sik down to his marrow.

Surrendering to the flames, Dong-sik leans into his touch and says, “Next time, then.”

  


When morning breaks they return to Daehan to find Ji-hoon running himself into a frenzy preparing for tomorrow’s board meeting: the first since In-woo came back into his life. In-woo jumps right into priming him, which leaves Dong-sik on his own for the morning after they leave. He wastes time trying to solve a rubik’s cube while also trying to solve the puzzle of why he’s been feeling restless lately, despite his apparent contentment. He gets a bit antsy with loneliness when he’s on his own, and then he feels hyperaware of In-woo’s presence whenever he’s near. That feeling always goes away after a few minutes, but Dong-sik has also been suffering from discomfort whenever In-woo smiles at him. Doesn’t matter if it’s his soft-edged smile or the unhinged razor-blade grin, or the quick flash of teeth that slips through when he forgets to control his face. Dong-sik’s chest grows tight no matter which it is.

As if that isn’t bad enough, there’s also the fluttering of his pulse when In-woo curls his arm around Dong-sik’s shoulders or waist, and the flush of heat that washes over him when their faces draw close, and the spark of longing whenever In-woo is looking anywhere but at him.

Maybe he’s coming down with a ghost fever.

Dong-sik is floating outside Ji-hoon’s office windows and enjoying some fresh air when the brothers return. Dong-sik turns as In-woo slips through the glass and asks how the meeting went; In-woo doesn’t look like he’s having an aneurysm as he talks, so even though he has some complaints, Dong-sik is reassured that he won’t have to prevent a fratricide today. 

“Ah, your friend in asset management,” In-woo says as they phase back through the windows. “The small one who was infatuated with you.”

“Mi-joo-ssi?”

“She was running late today. I saw her leaving the elevator earlier looking like a mess.”

“Oh no,” Dong-sik says, already up and ready to check on her. He’s halfway across Ji-hoon’s office before he actually thinks about this report, and then he swivels back to examine In-woo.

In-woo has no use for Mi-joo, nor does he have any particular emotions about her. He doesn’t gain from paying attention to her, which means he really did happen to notice her struggling and likely retained this information solely because he knows Dong-sik cares about her and would want to know.

It’s such a tiny gesture. But it’s also probably one of the most selfless things he’s ever done for Dong-sik, who suffers from a whole range of emotions In-woo neither possesses nor comprehends, but has kept in his consideration anyway. 

And this, more than anything else, makes Dong-sik realize that he might mean more to In-woo than he thought. He’s never qualified their relationship with words. All the different roles they’ve played for one another muddies it into a mess, but the one thing Dong-sik does know is that they’re entangled together, and he intends to keep it that way. Hopefully In-woo does too.

“What’s with you?” In-woo says irritably when he notices Dong-sik is just staring stupidly into space. “Go visit your little friend.”

“I’m just thankful for the tip,” Dong-sik replies on autopilot, incapable of thinking anything through right now.

He flies over to Mi-joo while ignoring the ache under his ribs and finds her being quietly comforted by Jeong-ah.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Mi-joo is saying as she straightens out her shirt. “It was just- just some trouble with my parents’ debt.”

Dong-sik and Jeong-ah gasp in unison, but Mi-joo clarifies, saying she isn’t in danger or trouble, but with her efforts to help quickly clear the gambling debts, she’s been scraping by recently, and it’s starting to take its toll. The others make sympathetic noises, and Team Leader Kong comes over to hand Mi-joo a bottle of water, awkwardly telling her to take it easy for the day and to let them know if anyone suspicious tries to bother her.

Dong-sik takes his leave as Mi-joo thanks him and returns to the office, where Ji-hoon is eating lunch and In-woo is hovering over his shoulder and pointing at something on the screen.

“I’m telling you, I already talked to him about that,” Ji-hoon is whining.

“Talk to him again or he’s going to try and pull the same stunt he did last time. Put the pressure on. Let him know there will be consequences if he doesn’t fall into line. This is one of those times you _should_ remind people of who has all the power here.” In-woo’s eyes are still narrowed like he’s on the prowl when he shifts his attention to Dong-sik, but his tone turns mild as he asks, “What was the problem?”

“Money has been kind of tight since she’s trying to help her parents deal with their gambling loans. She’ll tough it out, but I wish there was more I could do to help,” Dong-sik sighs as he flops onto the couch. “Living problems are a pain.”

“This is the woman who Ji-hoon roped into his stupid plan?”

“Yep,” Dong-sik says, as Ji-hoon coughs and tries to busy himself with whatever’s on his screen.

“I already apologized for that,” he mumbles, but has the sense not to comment further for fear of reminding Dong-sik how pissed off he’d been about that incident. Even now, he’s getting a bit annoyed thinking about it. Poor Mi-joo.

In-woo studies Dong-sik for a second before asking, “Ji-hoon. Do you have access to my estate?”

“Huh?” Ji-hoon says, glancing up from his computer. His mouth is half full of salad. “Yeah, of course. Haven’t done anything with it though. Why?”

“Authorize a withdrawal in preparation for the Chuseok bonus for all Daehan employees. Triple the normal amount.”

Ji-hoon chokes down his salad and asks, “Are you sure? That’s three million won per employee, which is- wait how many people work here again?”

“Doesn’t matter; put it through. It’ll be a good PR move for us anyway, to redistribute your publicly reviled brother’s wealth to your employees. Give Oh Mi-joo six million.”

“Uh, okay, I’ll call the bank later. Weird way to use your money, but you’re dead so I guess you don’t have anything better to spend it on. Don’t tell me you’re gonna make me do this too,” Ji-hoon says to Dong-sik, who is still gawking at In-woo in surprise.

“Um, charity is a great way to assist people who are less fortunate than you,” he replies numbly as In-woo looks down at the file on Ji-hoon’s desk.

“I thought the expansion on this building was scrapped. Why is there a revised proposal here?”

“Ugh, Mom thought it would be a good opportunity to make connections with…”

Dong-sik tunes them out as he tries to digest what just happened. Because what _did_ just happen?

Is this restitution toward someone his brother wronged? Or an act of the kindness he’s been unenthusiastically learning how to spread? Or as a gift to Dong-sik, because Dong-sik is In-woo’s and therefore everyone Dong-sik cares for also falls under his territory?

“In-woo-ssi…” Dong-sik finally says, still reeling.

“What?” He sees Dong-sik’s expression and furrows his brow. “Stop looking so pitiful. She’ll be fine. Didn’t you say before that her performance this quarter has been at the top of the board? If you’re really so worried we can go hunt down her loan sharks and give them an incentive to leave her alone,” he says, wearing his predator smile again. As usual, Dong-sik’s heart clenches at the sight.

“Um, no, let’s not do that,” he replies blankly.

“Alright, well, go haunt the coffee cart or something; I’ll attend to you once this dunce remembers how his own organization system works,” he says before trying to wrest the mouse away from Ji-hoon, who is waving his hand wildly through In-woo’s head in a counterattack.

“Hyung, stop trying to possess my computer or I’m gonna have you exorcised!”

“Hah, I’d like to see you try and survive through the end of the year without me.”

Their brotherly bickering fades to white noise as Dong-sik lets himself go invisible again, and just watches them pointlessly struggle with one another.

After a moment, he closes his eyes, and just thinks about the warm emotion bubbling out from his chest into the rest of his body. It’s both pleasant and a little bit painful. He thinks he’s ready to face what it means.

Dong-sik has to acknowledge a fact he’s been denying for too long.

He has feelings for Seo In-woo. Intense feelings. The kind that he’s never actually had for anyone else before, which is why it took him so long to catch on.

But the shock of being in love with a man who has tried very hard multiple times to kill him is less than the shock of knowing that he is much, _much_ less troubled by this revelation than he should be.

In-woo has done plenty of objectively horrendous things, and he’ll never be brought to justice for them, by virtue of being dead. But he’s also now done some objectively positive things, and perhaps it’s callous to measure lives taken against lives saved, but at this point, he’s rescued about four times as many people as he’s killed. Does that tip the scales of justice?

Is it enough? Can it ever be enough?

Dong-sik’s head hurts if he thinks about it too much. But his heart hurts more thinking about leaving In-woo alone to slowly twist back into the person he was before their lives became impossibly intertwined. At this point, leaving In-woo is not an option.

If caring is what it takes to slowly right the wrongs that were committed, then Dong-sik will care enough on behalf of every person who didn’t while they were alive. However long it takes, until they’ve finished all the remaining business they have in this realm. Long enough for Dong-sik to help In-woo repay his debt to the universe and to let the heavens see that he’s changed, that he’s become the person that Dong-sik knew he could be. But if that moment doesn’t come too soon, Dong-sik won’t cry over it.

Because Dong-sik’sIn-woo — the ghost of the man that once toyed with his life for sport, the shadow of a man who could have been, the all too real person who only Dong-sik has the right to see — is the only one who exists now, and Dong-sik has spent too much time shaping him to let him go. Not his In-woo, who smiles when Dong-sik tells a story about his fumbling childhood, and sighs in annoyance as he draws a girl’s attention to her dropped wallet, and wrinkles his nose in confusion when Dong-sik insists on playing soccer with him on an empty school field. The man who didn’t hesitate to plunge a knife into Dong-sik’s heart or to point a shotgun in his face is the same one who files away every meaningless scrap of information Dong-sik freely gives out and allows himself to be convinced onto a ferris wheel at sunset. The serial killer who tried to push Dong-sik into taking a life is the same guardian spirit who pushed a child back to shore as the waves almost dragged her under.

In-woo is still selfish and relentless and calculating, but he’s also diligent and competent and attentive in that obsessive way of his that begins to wrap back around to sweet when considering how crooked his mindset is. 

Dong-sik didn’t intend to lie when he said he didn’t belong to In-woo. He just hadn’t realized at the time that no matter what In-woo thinks about him, he’s come to see In-woo as thoroughly, irrevocably _his_. No one else knows him like Dong-sik does. No one else has seen both the awful, inhuman crimes he’s committed as well as all the little kind, helpful things he does every day despite himself. No one else has seen the way he burns like a newly-formed star, brilliant and possessive, but also oddly naive in little, vulnerable ways.

He’s a beautiful, impossible, walking contradiction, and Dong-sik loves him for it. 

Maybe In-woo could learn to feel something adjacent to love for Dong-sik in return.

\--

Dong-sik gets kind of weird for a few days after his earth-shaking realization and In-woo notices, and gets considerably cranky about it. Mostly because Dong-sik is now too aware of the way their bodies orbit one another, causing him to become more aloof to try and save his sanity as he adjusts to this new reality. He needs some room to figure out how to navigate their relationship now that he understands what he wants from it. But In-woo doesn’t like being denied the right to invade Dong-sik’s personal space, so he becomes snappish and even more tactile in response. He pulls Dong-sik everywhere by the hand and crowds up against him on the bus and leans in close to speak right into his ear. It’s extremely flustering, and Dong-sik almost starts a fight over it on the rooftop one day.

“Why are you running away from me?” In-woo finally asks, after Dong-sik accidentally headbutts him while escaping to go chase down Ji-hoon for his lesson of the day (“actually listen when people tell you how they’re feeling”). He chased Dong-sik all the way back to the escape room, leaving Ji-hoon behind to do his pre-holiday check in rounds alone.

“What makes you think I’m running away?” Dong-sik asks as he floats off to hide behind one of the escape room hospital beds.

In-woo gestures at the space between them. “You went and hid behind a hospital bed.”

“I just think this is a nice place to stand.”

“I thought you were a better liar than this,” In-woo says disapprovingly as he approaches. Dong-sik begins casually moving away toward another room and then loses his quasi-footing as something loops around his ankle and drags him forward. In-woo’s energy. Damn it.

“Yook Dong-sik. Stop trying to escape this conversation,” In-woo says as he perches himself on the bed and pulls Dong-sik into his lap so that they’re facing each other. He loops his arms around Dong-sik’s waist to hold him in place, but keeps his tendril of energy tied around Dong-sik’s leg to cuff them together.

“Must we sit like this?” Dong-sik demands. He has nowhere to place his hands except on In-woo’s chest or hips, and they’re both equally mortifying. He settles for folding them on his own stomach and tries not to let their eye contact incinerate him. Too close, too close. He’ll never survive this.

“I’m the only thing you can’t phase through; this minimizes your chances of escape.”

Dong-sik puts his face in his hands. “I know, but this is so- ugh-”

“The sooner you explain yourself, the sooner I’ll let you free,” In-woo says, tightening his grip. It’s funny how he’ll react to Dong-sik’s hugs with utter confusion but then do something like this without any regard to how intimate or affectionate it feels. He tilts his head to try and catch a glimpse of Dong-sik’s burning face, and Dong-sik doesn’t know if he wants to punch him or kiss him.

“In-woo-ssi,” Dong-sik whines, trying half-heartedly once more to get away before he does either.

“Stop struggling or I’ll hold you by the throat instead.”

With a sigh, Dong-sik stops wriggling and gives into his other desire, which is to completely collapse into In-woo, knocking him onto his back and using him as a human mattress. “Let’s talk.”

“Alright,” In-woo says, sounding wheezy even though they don’t need to breathe. “Why are you being weird lately?” Dong-sik can feel In-woo’s chest rumble under his cheek as he speaks.

“Reasons you don’t need to worry about,” Dong-sik says, closing his eyes. What a mess he’s made of things. By trying to ease up on his too-consuming feelings for In-woo he accidentally tumbled him into a bed. Goodness. “You didn’t do anything. I just wanted some space.”

“Then just tell me that. What happened to ‘clearly communicate to reduce misunderstandings’? Do you even listen to your own lessons on being nice?”

“I can’t be nice all the time.”

“You’re right. You should lose your temper more often,” In-woo says, and Dong-sik can hear the smile in his voice even without looking up. He’s probably thinking about how Dong-sik chewed out Ji-hoon last week over being rude to waitstaff. His fingers have reached under Dong-sik’s coat to knead gently through his turtleneck at the small of his back.

Dong-sik makes a noise low in his throat and curls one hand in the crook of In-woo’s elbow. “I don’t like it when I’m that hostile.”

“Mm, but I do.”

“You would.”

“Do you still want space?” Of course he would ask this while Dong-sik is literally lying on top of him.

“If I said yes, would you respect that?” Dong-sik asks, turning so he can see In-woo’s face.

In-woo’s mouth twists with displeasure, and he pulls Dong-sik a little bit tighter against him, but he does say, “If I have to. But I won’t be happy about it.”

Dong-sik smiles at his wretched honesty and lays his head back down right over In-woo’s heart. “Let’s just go back to normal. I’ll stop avoiding you, and you give me some breathing room again.”

“So you _were_ avoiding me,” In-woo mutters to himself. “Fine. I’ll take the deal.”

“Good.” Dong-sik wants to lie here a while longer but he remembers that he abandoned Ji-hoon to try and make nice on his own. “I should go check on your brother. I think he’ll be okay but it’s a lot of people to talk to and he’ll probably get annoyed a third of the way through.”

“In ten minutes.”

“Five.”

“Eight,” In-woo offers, rounding up in his favor. Dong-sik lets him have it, since he doesn’t really want to go back either, but he keeps it to himself so In-woo doesn’t try to swindle him into not returning at all.

  


Ji-hoon is down in sales by the time they find him, and he’s managing, even though Dong-sik can tell from his expression he’s started to zone out a little bit when people talk. Still, he isn’t acting like a raging asshole, and he makes polite noises and remembers people’s names as he bids them goodbye and moves onto the next team, so it’s pretty much as good as it’ll get.

Dong-sik follows him around the floor as he makes conversation, feeling rather impressed with how much better he is at treating people with respect now, as well as his overall increase in maturity. He still has a ways to go, but it really feels like In-woo and Dong-sik made some headway with him. Still, Ji-hoon deserves some credit for being open to help at all.

Ji-hoon starts to exit the room with his secretary, but then gets almost plowed over by a man rushing through the doors, who then trips over Ji-hoon’s feet and flails to the ground, dropping the file in his hand. The room goes silent. Ji-hoon himself seems at a loss as to what just happened, but reaches down.

In-woo raises an eyebrow. “Is he…”

“I think he is!”

They hover by the wall and watch Ji-hoon help the man back to his feet, before bending and picking up the folder he just dropped.

“C-chairman, I’m so sorry, I should’ve looked where I was going, p-please forgive me,” the sales associate says, bowing at an angle that almost exceeds 90 degrees. “I’m sorry!”

A look of irritation crosses Ji-hoon’s face, but then he exhales and seems to breathe it out of himself. “No need for that,” he says, gesturing at the man to straighten back up. “I know you’re all extra busy around now, but don’t move so fast that you hurt yourself.” He glances down at the file in his hands before handing it over and clapping the guy on the back. “Good luck with this one. I expect to see strong results from you.”

With that, he leaves the room, and activity returns to normal when everyone realizes Ji-hoon isn’t going to go ballistic.

“I’m proud of him,” Dong-sik says as Ji-hoon gets in the elevator with his secretary, to visit the accounting floor next. “You two have come a long way.”

“If you insist,” In-woo says, squinting at his brother, and Dong-sik laughs it off.

“Look at him! He really just helped that man instead of throwing a rich guy tantrum. He did it.”

“ _We_ did it.”

“You should give him some credit,” Dong-sik scolds. “He hasn’t fallen off the wagon in months, even without any threats, which means he’s probably really changed. At least a little bit.”

“We’ll see. It hasn’t even been a full year yet. Don’t get too optimistic.”

“You’ve changed too, you know,” he reminds In-woo happily as they float up to Accounting. Dong-sik’s strategy of “be so annoying that doing good things to shut me up becomes a conditioned response” is so much more successful than he ever thought it would be. 

“As have you.” 

“Have I?” Dong-sik doesn’t feel much different. He’s more confident and less of a sucker, but he’s pretty sure that happened before he died.

“You’re more manipulative. More demanding. You don’t hesitate anymore to use people’s personalities against them. You drag me wherever you please as if you have the right to do so. You make sure to get what you want.” He looks delighted by the change, and Dong-sik realizes that the influence might have been going both ways between them, whether intentionally or not. 

“You’re to blame, aren’t you?” Dong-sik accuses.

In-woo trails the pad of his thumb over Dong-sik’s left cheek, where his own bloody handprint still stains his skin. “Who’s to say? I think you’re just revealing what was hidden inside you all along.”

Dong-sik thinks about the thrill he got out of turning In-woo’s mind games back on him even as everything was going to hell in a handbasket, and concludes he might be right. It seems like everyone’s been changing bit by bit.

They stalk Ji-hoon around for a while longer and then retire to the rooftop when Ji-hoon leaves work for the day to go drinking with one of his chaebol friends. Dong-sik sits atop the rail and In-woo leans next to him to watch the sunset.

“We should take a trip abroad one day,” Dong-sik says as the city ignites in purple and gold. Even with all their free time, they’ve seen only a fraction more of the city, and none of the rest of the world. “When you think Ji-hoon-ssi is okay to run things on his own for a while.”

“Where do you want me to take you?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been to many places outside of Korea. I guess I want to see, um. The Eiffel Tower?” It’s the first foreign landmark that comes to mind.

“Then Paris it is,” In-woo decides just like that. “There’s a lot to see there. We’ll go in the new year. You’ll enjoy the catacombs.”

A sudden thought occurs to Dong-sik. “What if we meet a French ghost? I only speak Korean.”

“What kind of concern is that?” In-woo looks like he wants to laugh at Dong-sik.

“I want to communicate! And what if we have to ride a bus or train somewhere? Did you learn French in your fancy grade school?”

“No, I only know English, Mandarin, and Japanese.” Of course he does.

“Let’s go to Japan first then,” Dong-sik decides. “That’s closer and safer. I’ll start studying French in my free time. We need to be able to read a map, at least. Neither of us has smartphones anymore. Ugh, now I’m getting stressed out thinking about it. What if we get lost and can’t get back to Korea?”

In-woo gives in, chuckling to himself at Dong-sik’s expense. “You’re still the most ridiculous person I know.”

“I just want to be prepared!”

“Well, you have several months. Tell Ji-hoon to buy you a beginner’s guide to French.” His smile slips away when he looks down at the street below. He straightens his posture and seems to think about something for a few seconds before he turns to Dong-sik and says, “Let’s go somewhere right now.”

“Like where?”

In-woo shrugs, looking back at the sky. “Daegu? Namwon? I don’t particularly care; I just want to leave Seoul.” He doesn’t explain his sudden wanderlust.

“Oh. Uh, I’ve never been to Gyeongju,” Dong-sik suggests.

“Alright, to Seoul Station then.” He puts an arm around Dong-sik’s waist and leads him off the roof, the two of them descending gracefully with jellyfish steps through the air until they’re flying slightly above street level.

It isn’t until they’ve long left Daehan behind that Dong-sik realizes that In-woo must have been looking down at the spots where their bodies landed. They’re only a couple of months away from their death anniversary, and Dong-sik doesn’t know what’s keeping In-woo tied to Earth, but when he looks at the difference between his In-woo and the In-woo that was, he can’t imagine that his bitterness runs still as deep as it did at their time of death. 

If they continue down this path, even someone as difficult as In-woo may someday be prepared to pass on.

Dong-sik hadn’t been kidding when he told In-woo he had no real drive to move on to his next life. He still doesn’t, to be honest. He likes being able to see his friends and family, he likes helping people, and he likes spending time with In-woo.

But while he doesn’t have a grudge to settle, In-woo might. And when that resentment is laid to rest, he’ll be ready for a new life. And with all the good he’s been trying to do, perhaps his judgement will be less harsh, and he can find his way toward a happier end than this one.

It would be selfish of Dong-sik to keep In-woo here against his will. But he wants to. He wants to be selfish. He spent so many years being too nice, too easy, too much of a pushover. He never asked for much. He paid his dues. Can’t he be greedy for once? Can’t he be possessive and self-centered this one time, to keep this one person for himself?

He doesn’t know how he’ll learn to be alone, when he’s spent his entire death in the company of the person he’s come to love. Even other ghosts have expected to see them as a pair now. He’ll continue helping humans where he can, and he’ll watch over his friends and family, and travel around trying all the things he never had time for when he was alive.

But it won’t be the same. He doesn’t know how he’s going to greet each sunrise without In-woo by his side.

This thought festers in his brain even after they get onto the train, and he starts wondering how many trips they’ll spend together before they go their separate ways. How much time does he have left? One year? Five? The uncertainty is maddening.

“You’re still acting strange, and it makes me want to cut out your kidneys,” In-woo says as he yanks Dong-sik into an empty seat with him. “Sit.”

Dong-sik sits. And continues to spiral as he looks out the window at the sun falling past the horizon. He could try and slow In-woo’s progress to keep him longer, but that’s too underhanded, no matter how much more manipulative Dong-sik may be now. He’ll simply have to ease himself into the idea so that by the time that day comes, he’ll be ready.

“Stop overthinking whatever’s taken over that tiny brain of yours,” In-woo says, pulling Dong-sik down to lean against him. “You can sit in on a language class if you’re that concerned. There’s no shortage of universities to choose from.”

“That’s a good idea,” Dong-sik mumbles. The weight of In-woo under him — the only solid, tangible thing left remaining in his world — pulls him back to the present. He should be enjoying their little vacation, not dithering over the unpredictable future.

“Tell me about the time you almost got lost at sea,” he requests as he links their arms together. In-woo makes a bemused noise but allows Dong-sik to cling to him as he starts to tell the strange tale of how his father thought it was important for a ten year old to know how to sail. As he watches the scenery blur into shadow and color, Dong-sik commits to memory the cadence and tone of In-woo’s speech, locking it away with every other detail about In-woo that only he knows.

He’ll worry about everything else later. 

\--

It’s crunch time at Daehan, and In-woo has basically been spending all his time in Ji-hoon’s office so Dong-sik decides to take it easy on them both for a little bit and finally see if his dream visions will pay off. He’s visited several more animal dreams since that first time, and he thinks he’s got a good idea of how to enter and exit now. While he’d really like to visit his family members, he decides to peek in on Chil-sung first, since he’s got a hearty body and is unlikely to react negatively to Dong-sik’s sudden appearance in his subconscious.

“I’m going to be out the next couple of nights,” he tells In-woo before he heads over to Chil-sung’s place. “Good luck with the new acquisition. Tell your brother to go home at some point."

“Mm,” In-woo answers, distracted by something on the computer. Ji-hoon has already passed out on the couch in yesterday’s clothes. Dong-sik is struck by the terrible amount of affection he feels, even for Ji-hoon, who is currently drooling onto a cushion.

“Okay, see you later. Be good!”

  


Chil-sung sleeps surprisingly early now that he has a steady job, which is another good reason to see him. Dong-sik smoothes a hand over his forehead, trying to ease the wrinkles, before he heads on in. He finds Chil-sung sitting on a bench looking out at a busy street, and drops down next to him, waiting for him to notice, which he does almost immediately.

“H-hyung-nim?”

“Hi, Chil-sung-ssi,” Dong-sik says with a smile, giving him a wave. “Wanna go for a walk?”

Chil-sung bursts into tears, which sets Dong-sik off, and then they’re sobbing and hugging while trying to waddle down the street together. They wander through the streets of Chil-sung’s dreams, which pass from decade to decade as they wind in and out. Chil-sung tells him what his family and the store and his former gangster friends are up to, and Dong-sik makes no reference to his afterlife. He’s pretty certain none of his family would be very happy if they knew who his companion was, so he just keeps that to himself.

After he bids a tearful goodbye to Chil-sung, he goes to visit his father and stepmother next. His success has made him greedy for more. His father’s dream is more like a fragmented memory, and when Dong-sik slips in, his father doesn’t seem to remember that he’s dead, so they spend an afternoon in the Meat Republic kitchen making endless batches of spicy cucumber salad. Despite his protests, he gives Dong-sik a hug before he goes.

Dong-sik’s stepmother is on the moon when he finds steps into her dream, and she pulls him into her embrace right away. They sit together and reminisce about all the good memories he had forgotten about during his amnesia as they spin slowly around the earth. He flies her back down to earth after telling her to live a good life.

Dong-chan still has notebooks out on his desk when Dong-sik floats into his room, but he’s passed out on the bed. Dong-sik is slightly envious; he’s been feeling a bit tired since leaving his stepmother’s subconscious, but it should pass soon. He tucks the blanket closer to Dong-chan’s neck before sliding into his dream. Dong-chan is swimming through an ocean of multicolored sand as Dong-sik joins him, and he does a long lap around a tall glass spire and back before he notices his brother there.

“Hey, Dong-chan,” Dong-sik says warmly, lifting his hand in a wave.

“Hyung? Is that really you?” Dong-chan asks, dropping the basket he picked up somewhere along the way.

“Yeah, I wanted to come visit you.”

He wants to say more, but he has his arms full of his younger brother before he can.

They didn’t hug much once Dong-chan left elementary school behind, but even though he’s only a few centimeters shorter than Dong-sik now, he still fits under Dong-sik’s arms the same way he did when he was a kid. Dong-sik squeezes him reassuringly before letting him go to look at him.

“Did you get skinnier?” he asks, concerned. “Your mom is going to get worried if you’re not eating enough.”

“You sound like a grandma,” Dong-chan says with a laugh. They swim their way over to sit on a floating log high above the sands to watch strangers paddle around the spire.

“So how’s school?”

“It’s okay. Are you- are _you_ doing okay? We just want you to be happy, and if you’re visiting my dreams, you haven’t moved on, right?” Dong-chan asks in a wavering voice. Dong-sik laughs nervously as he tries to figure out how to deflect.

“I’m doing fine-”

“Are you sure? Because you were with us and then suddenly you _weren’t-_ and it just isn’t fair. That you had to die that way.”

Sometimes Dong-sik thinks about that day. About the fall, about the pressure pushing back against his chest as the glass gives way, about reaching for a hand that slips out of his grasp, about the terrifying realization that it’s all over right before he hits the ground.

But much more often he thinks about the people he loves and the way they’ve rebuilt themselves after loss, and all he can feel is grateful that he had the chance to care about such deeply loving and wonderful people. And he’s sorry that his death took him from them so soon, but he’s equally content with the existence he has now, and the chance that he wouldn’t have gotten had he not died.

Maybe he could’ve had a more fulfilling life if he hadn’t died when he did. But he can’t bring himself to regret it anymore. 

“Hey, don’t cry, I’m okay. Don’t worry about me; you should be focusing on yourself. You’re almost out of high school now! You’re practically an adult! You don’t have time to be worrying about your stupid hyung. I promise that I’m doing alright.”

“B-But if you’re still here-”

“Who says I’m still here? Have you seen me?” He claps Dong-chan on the back and shakes his head. Skewing the truth is fine if it helps ease his brother’s worries. “This is a dream, silly. Anything can happen in dreams. I just came by to check on you, the same way my mom used to check on me. So tell me how you’re doing.”

Dong-chan blinks away the tears at the corners of his eyes and slowly starts updating Dong-sik on his life. He grows more steady as he talks, and by the time Dong-sik leaves his subconscious, he seems more himself again. Dong-sik puts some energy into patting him gently on the shoulder before flying slowly out of the house.

His sister and brother-in-law are a neighborhood or two away, so he decides to drop in on them another day. Besides, he’s feeling a little drained already.

So last he visits Bo-kyung, slipping into her mind in the early hours near morning. She’s poring over a case file when he sits down across from her in the cafe, and her eyes widen when she sees him.

“Dong-sik-ssi?”

He gives her a toothy grin when she looks him up and down, as if checking for injuries. “Bo-kyung-ssi, you look good. How have you been?”

“I- I’m good. How are _you?_ ”

“I can’t complain. Are you stuck on a case? Can I take a look?” he asks, already looking over her notes in excitement.

“Sure,” she says, pushing them over and sitting back down. People are more docile in dreams, willing to let nonsensical things go that they wouldn’t in reality, which is why Bo-kyung jumps into talking about her case instead of pressing him for further details.

Bo-kyung’s subconscious has held onto several salient details of her current case, but some of the bits have translated strangely to her dream, so Dong-sik helps her realize that she should backtrack to the victim’s attic, but also that her culprit is a polar bear. He hopes she remembers the attic part and not the bear part when she wakes.

“Okay, I’ll go check on that lead,” Bo-kyung is saying as she packs her bag.

“Good idea,” Dong-sik says, preparing to leave her dream. “Let me know what you find.”

“Dong-sik-ssi, are- are you happy?” she asks abruptly, before he can bid her goodbye. She’s watching him with the same keen expression she used to when grilling him for information.

He falters for a second, but collects himself enough to tell her, “Y-yeah, I think I am. I’m doing great, actually.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she says, smiling, and it makes his heart feel tender with fondness for her. “Let’s meet again.” She gives him a quick hug, and then she’s out the door, onto a new phase of her dream. He watches her walk away as the cafe fades at the edges, collapsing now that Bo-kyung has exited. He should leave too, before he falls into the abyss with it.

Each time Dong-sik pulled himself out of a dream was slightly more difficult than the last, but it isn’t until he’s leaving Bo-kyung that he really has some trouble returning to himself. He has to put in quite a bit of effort, and barely escapes before the cafe dissolves into grayness. Even once all his energy is back in his body, it feels depleted, like he’s lost some along the way. Sluggishly, he begins flying back to the escape room, but he feels several waves of dizziness pulse through him on his return trip.

Maybe he shouldn’t have visited everybody in one night.

It takes him twice as long as normal, and when he finally stumbles through the wall of the escape room he just hovers lethargically near the ground. His eyes fall shut and he drifts into a vacant, dreamlike state as he tries to recover his energy. He must have used much more than usual tonight.

He doesn’t know how much time passes like this, but he can feel the cloying pull of something even deeper and darker than the mindlessness he’s submerged in now. It doesn’t seem right to give in, but Dong-sik doesn’t have the willpower to resist. He starts to lose himself to the darkness until someone’s voice pierces through the haze.

“So you were here. What are you doing down there?” Someone grabs him by the arm, rattling lightly. “Dong-sik-ssi? Are you- are you falling asleep? Hey. Get up.” A more vigorous shake.

“Mnngh,” Dong-sik manages to mumble. A hand begins smacking lightly against his face.

“Yook Dong-sik. Wake up. Ghosts don’t get tired, remember? So get yourself together.”

“In-woo-ssi?” Dong-sik says, curling into the touch. Every part of him feels so heavy. He doesn’t even know if he’s floating anymore. The deep continues calling for him. “Sorry, I’ll get up in a second. Just give me- give me a minute. Be up in a sec…”

The hand at his arm tightens. “Dong-sik-ssi. That was an order, not a suggestion. Get up before I break your spine and throw you to the bottom of the ocean.”

 _But I’m so tired_ , Dong-sik tries to say, but his mouth doesn’t seem to be working right. He’s being shaken again, he can feel it, but his eyelids and limbs feel leaden and the electric core in his chest feels fainter than usual, like some of his energy has dissipated into the air, like he’s formless and fading. He can feel a hand grabbing his face but the sensation is even more dull than usual. He bounces as someone rests his torso against something solid, but he barely registers the feeling. He’s just so, so tired.

“It’s okay, I’ll be up soon,” he mumbles into the softness that surrounds him. In-woo. It’ll be okay, then. Dong-sik is safe here. He can take a little rest knowing In-woo won’t let anything happen to him. “Won’t be long. Just wait for me. Just wait here, In-woo-ssi.”

Just a minute, and then he’ll be back. His In-woo will keep him safe.

“I don’t have the patience to wait. Get up _now_.”

“Yook Dong-sik.”

“I will find you in your next life and I will systematically annihilate everything you love, do you hear me? I will tear your entire existence apart. It doesn't matter what or who you reincarnate as, I _will_ hunt you down. As many times as it takes, until you learn your lesson. There won’t even be any point to living anymore once I’m done with you, so you shouldn’t even bother moving on. Just stay here.”

“Wake _up_ , Yook Dong-sik. Open your eyes. Stay with me, or I’ll kill you in every life you ever live hereafter.”

“Dong-sik. Dong-sik-ah. Wake up.”

\-- 

It’s strange to have to open his eyes again, after going months and months without doing anything even close to sleeping. Dong-sik goes through that sticky-eyed routine of forcing his eyelids open despite his reluctance to get up. By the time he remembers that he’s dead and has no work or school to be avoiding, his vision is filled with the sight of In-woo’s crazed face trying to burn a hole through Dong-sik’s forehead with the force of his angry glare.

“Too close, In-woo-ssi,” he mumbles, reaching up and patting In-woo’s face away. “Need space.”

“I’m going to destroy you,” In-woo responds, and Dong-sik smiles sleepily at him. He stretches his arms wide with a groan and finally notices that his head is resting on In-woo’s lap. How cozy. 

“Isn’t once enough? Help me sit up.” With In-woo’s help, he’s pulled back into a seated position and he lets out a mighty yawn. So that’s what their ghost teacher was warning them about. Energy exhaustion is no joke.

“Don’t you dare give me any lip when you just spent an entire day unconscious and half-invisible,” In-woo snaps at him.

“A whole day? Wow. And what do you mean ‘half-invisible’?”

“You were fading in and out. As if you weren’t fully present.”

Dong-sik frowns, looking down at his hands, but they seem solid to him. Must have worn off after his nap. “That does sound pretty alarming. Were you worried?” He’s teasing, really; just having a joke at his own expense, because even if it were true, In-woo would never admit it— 

“Yes, you vermin,” In-woo snaps.

“I- wait, you were? Are you sure?” Dong-sik boggles at him. No way.

The look In-woo gives him is exceptionally pained, as if he regrets ever meeting Dong-sik. “I really should have killed you outside your apartment that night.”

“When was this? I don’t remember that.”

“If you knew about it, I wouldn’t be a very good serial killer, would I?”

Dong-sik wants to rib him about that too, but notices on closer inspection that In-woo looks unusually tired, and that they’re still sitting only centimeters apart. Did In-woo really just remain here cradling Dong-sik’s unconscious form for an entire day? Did he really threaten to chase Dong-sik for the rest of eternity for leaving him?

“You weren’t lying,” Dong-sik says, shaken by the confirmation of his suspicions. “You were scared. You were afraid I was going to leave you.”

In-woo still looks furious as he bites out his response. “Yes. I thought you were trying to escape my grasp again.”

Dong-sik wants to reward him for his honesty but punish him for all the violent things he was threatening to do as Dong-sik was falling unconscious. So he deposits himself in In-woo’s lap and hugs him for the best of both worlds.

In-woo looks bewildered, as expected. “Why are we doing this now.”

“Lesson #36: hugging people is a nice way to let them know they don’t have to worry,” Dong-sik says blithely as he tucks his chin over In-woo’s shoulder and rubs a soothing hand along his back. “Besides, you like being close to me. Hug me back or I’ll enter the reincarnation cycle right this second.”

“You don’t even know how,” In-woo says, but he does wrap his arms around Dong-sik. Awkwardly at first, and then so snug that it feels uncomfortable. It’s perfect.

“You’re right,” Dong-sik responds. “I can’t reincarnate yet. I told you before that I can’t very well just leave you alone. Someone has to stop whatever nefarious business you’re planning. So stick around and keep me busy, okay?”

“Well, at the rate I’m going I’m never going to be nice enough for you. You’re trapped here with me forever.”

It barely even sounds like a threat, with In-woo’s voice angled low and brooding. It’s a promise, if anything. Dong-sik pulls back so their eyes can meet, and he sees in In-woo’s expression a desperation that mirrors his own.

In-woo dreads the thought of being left without Dong-sik just as much as Dong-sik does. In-woo has no intention of leaving him behind, and what Dong-sik had worried might have been a one-sided obsession is thoroughly requited. Their originally unintentional partnership has morphed into full-on codependency.

Neither of them has anything but each other, and Dong-sik doesn’t ever plan to let him go. In-woo apparently feels the same way.

“I thought you wanted to be rid of me,” Dong-sik says, unable to help himself. He needs the reassurance of proof. He needs to hear it out loud.

“I wanted to kill you,” In-woo corrects. “Some days I still do. It made your presence very irritating. However.”

“However?”

“The second you chose to follow me into death I decided I wasn’t going to just let you live in peace. If you hadn’t decided to stalk me, I would have kept tabs on you, to make sure you didn’t try to slip away. You may be my keeper, but you also belong to me, whether you like it or not.”

Dong-sik is too caught up on the first sentence to even register the others.

“You knew?” he asks, thinking back to that night again, and how that elegant hand slipped out of his grip. How he tried to chase it far enough to catch hold and save them both. How it didn’t work out so nicely for either of them.

In-woo searches his face for a sign that he doesn’t seem to find, and says, “I had a suspicion. You were reaching for me, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

His tone is both curious and colored with disbelief. Dong-sik has to take a beat to put himself in the headspace of that night to try and explain. “Because I didn’t think you deserved to die, even after everything. But I also thought death was too easy a way out for you. I don’t know; I was having a lot of emotions. But I started moving before I could help it, and now we’re here.”

“Do you regret it?” In-woo asks, his expression carefully neutral. Prepared for an answer he doesn’t want to hear. Dong-sik wants to reassure him as much as he wants to make his own intentions clear.

“No,” Dong-sik says firmly. “At the end of the day, I don’t. For a lot of different reasons. I think being dead gave us both the important chance to change ourselves and other people. But the biggest reason- well. Um. Look, go ahead and strangle me if you don’t want this.” Dong-sik reaches up to cup In-woo’s face in a clearly telegraphed movement. In-woo blinks a few times rapidly as Dong-sik leans in but he neither moves nor looks away. Dong-sik’s own eyes slip closed when their lips finally meet.

It takes a second for In-woo to begin kissing him back, and they separate softly after a moment. Dong-sik opens his eyes to find In-woo staring at him with that incandescent gaze.

“Is this okay?” Dong-sik asks, breathless, and In-woo captures him in another kiss as an answer. This one goes from hesitant to insistent very quickly, and the next even more so. Dong-sik experiments with pushing a bit of his energy into his lips and trembles at the delicious heat that ignites when it meets In-woo’s. They break apart almost immediately at the overwhelming jolt.

“W-wait, we can’t do that again so soon or I’ll lose my mind,” Dong-sik mumbles senselessly, resting his forehead against In-woo’s. 

“Agreed.”

“Actually, maybe we should pause in general. We should finish our talk.”

“Can I strangle you now?” In-woo asks, looking sullen, and Dong-sik laughs in response.

“If you want me to accidentally knee you in the ribs again when it starts to tickle, then sure.” He sits back far enough to take in all of In-woo’s face and then pulls them both to their feet. “Let’s go.”

Dong-sik takes them to the roof of the escape room building, where they sit and watch the city come alive.

“How did you know it was a choice? We hit the window at almost the same time,” Dong-sik asks, thinking about the way the glass exploded around them.

“Because you weren’t supposed to fall,” In-woo says after a stretch of silence, turning back to settle his pensive stare on Dong-sik’s face. “There was nothing to drag you down.”

And Dong-sik had suspected as much, remembering the sensation of those hands shoving him back as the glass gave way under their force. One final, selfless act of mercy.

“It was tenderheartedness after all,” he whispers, taking in the way In-woo stays perfectly still as Dong-sik reaches over to take hold of the hands that tried to save him as their last action in the living realm. In-woo was wearing gloves when he died, so Dong-sik can’t feel his skin beneath his fingertips, but he can pretend that if they were still alive, In-woo would be as warm as he remembered.

“Yes, and you completely squandered it. It took me years to build up enough kindness to do that one thing and it quite literally went out the window,” In-woo complains as Dong-sik locks fingers with him.

“Sorry. I think I overestimated the length of my arms,” Dong-sik confesses. “I thought I could grab you and still- well, you know. But I miscalculated.”

He doesn’t realize at first that the bizarre noise coming from In-woo’s mouth is a laugh, until it bursts forth in his ridiculous cackle. Dong-sik watches him laugh himself into a stupor, feeling both bemused and endeared about it. What an absolutely bizarre man he went and got himself involved with. What a twist of fate it is that he doesn’t mind at all.

In-woo finally stops wheezing long enough to gasp out, “ _You_ miscalculated? How do you think _I_ feel?”

Dong-sik cracks a smile, thinking of all the trouble they caused each other before they died. “I thought you liked all the excitement I brought to your life.”

“I’ll admit it was stimulating. You were an infuriating opponent. I’m still not sure how a chump like you kept wriggling out of my traps,” he sighs, sounding a bit nostalgic about it all.

“How flattering. What happened to all your charm?” Dong-sik gripes. “I want the polite and respectable Seo In-woo back.”

“No, you don’t.” In-woo says, looking pleased with himself. “You like me like this. You like knowing you helped make me this way.” Dong-sik makes a face, but doesn’t deny it. In-woo’s free hand comes up to hold Dong-sik’s face as they kiss again, sweet and languid. In-woo is uncharacteristically tame, considering, but Dong-sik doesn’t mind. Even after his accidental nap, he doesn’t think he has enough energy to handle being preyed upon yet.

“We need to go to work,” In-woo says after some unidentifiable amount of time. Everything from the last few minutes was a blur of sensation. 

Dong-sik pouts just slightly as they separate. “Do we?” 

“I do, at least. We’ve got a busy day ahead. You should go find a French class.”

“Okay,” Dong-sik agrees, “but I can’t go anywhere until you let go of me.” He means it in the literal sense; In-woo still has him trapped in place, though Dong-sik could phase through the roof if he really wanted.

In-woo looks between the two of them, and then his expression grows dark. “That reminds me. I haven’t punished you for your poor decisions yesterday.”

Ah. “Well, that’ll have to wait until after work,” Dong-sik says, patting In-woo on the cheek. “You’re very busy today, remember? Don’t worry, I won’t exhaust myself anymore,” he promises when he sees that In-woo still hasn’t released him.

“Don’t do anything that stupid ever again.” His embrace constricts further around Dong-sik, who shakes his head fondly.

“I don’t know if I can promise that, but I’ll pay more attention to how much energy I use. It’ll be okay. I swear.”

He holds out a hand and In-woo finally stops staring reproachfully at him and shakes it.

“You know what I’ll do to you if you break your promise.”

“Yes, of course,” Dong-sik says indulgently.

“And what I’ll do if you try to leave me.”

“Yep.”

They look at each other for several seconds, reading the truth in one another’s eyes, until In-woo offers him a satisfied smile.

“Alright. Then let’s go.”

In-woo finally allows Dong-sik out of his hold and steals one more kiss before they begin their journey toward Daehan. Halfway through, Dong-sik has to fight off the urge to spend the day at Daehan with In-woo or to steal him away for a getaway trip to the countryside. He shouldn’t distract In-woo from his work, and there’s no longer anything to worry about. With nothing to keep them apart, it’s good for them to learn how to spend more of their days on their own. They’ll still be inextricably attached — closer than they’ve ever been with anyone else, and well on their way to inseparable.

After all, they have nothing but each other and all the time in the world.


End file.
